It pays to be nice
It Pays To Be Nice: Corporate Social Responsibility and Audience Perception of Companies
Dimaano, M.Y. & Jumawan, P. A. (2013). It Pays To Be Nice: Corporate Social Responsibility and Audience Perception of Companies, Unpublished Undergraduate Thesis, University of the Philippines College of Mass Communication.
This undergraduate thesis explores the relationship of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and corporate reputation in the Philippine context. Despite of, or perhaps, because of their capitalistic nature, businesses and similar institutions are predisposed to do acts of goodwill to stakeholders in the name of business ethics.
This study takes ABS-CBN Corporation, one of the country’s biggest media networks, and its namesake foundation as cases-in-point and explores their reputation among selected audiences. This research also looks into the Foundation’s history and its current communication scheme to situate the contexts present in the study.
Interviews and an online survey were used to obtain the perspectives of the audiences and ABS-CBN Foundation, Inc. For the framework of this study, a model was applied using concepts from Hall’s Seminal Theory of Meaning-Making and Clark’s Communication-Management Approach.
Drawing from the interviews with its employees, ABS-CBN Foundation, Inc. was derived from the tagline of its mother company, “In the service of the Filipino.” To promote its different advocacies, the Foundation can take advantage of various media channels and tools as being affiliated with a media giant. In general, the perceptions of the selected audience were mixed, having both positive and negative views of on the particularities of ABS-CBN’s CSR. The positive views indicated that it is an act of sharing and a way of giving back to the community. Meanwhile, several from the selected audience find its CSR activities entirely to be self-serving and profitable only to the firm. On another hand, a few of the informants, albeit acknowledging ABS-CBN as a capitalist insititution, inferred that its CSR is a calculated execution that can bring both fame and profit to the company. Despite these, the outcomes suggest that the selected audience nevertheless find ABS-CBN’s CSR efforts as righteous, whether altruistic or not.
Claims in the literature review revealed a more positive reputation resulting from ABS-CBN’s involvement in CSR. Validation of these from the survey and interviews yielded a similar positive reputation of ABS-CBN. It turned out that some viewers are more inclined to support the network, because, aside from producing good programs, it does good deeds.