A growing number of companies, both multinationals and local firms, have begun to adopt the idea of sustainability development, and develop and market their green products/services with green advertising in developing countries. However, in the context of China where the idea of commercial environmentalism or green consumption is emerging and transported from the West, it is not clear that how the green consumption is advocated and how consumption practices are connected to environmental protection, and how the meaning of green consumption is constructed by firms operating in China. This study explores the Internet as a rich text for environmental marketing by analyzing the ways firms showcase details of their green products/services, production methods, business philosophy and other facets of their environmental practices and values. The online promotional information can be seen as corporate green advertising. Focused on the advertisings from corporate websites, and through the analytical framework of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) (e.g., Faircloug, 1992; 1995(a) (b); Wodak and Chilton, 2005), this study presents how a number of environmental conscious firms in China are portraying and promoting their environmental responsible image and green products/services, and aims to examine what firms are really telling and how they are discursively constructing corporate “greenness”. Based on the analyses of green advertisements from websites of four case companies (two MNCs in China: General Electric in China, Unilever in China, and two Chinese local firms: BYD automobile, and Landsea Real Estate), the study suggests that corporate green advertising discourse plays an active role in defining “reality” of greenness and imbuing meanings of consumption into environmentalism, as well as in achieving the hegemonic construction of corporate greenness. In addition, the corporate greenness is anthropocentric and embraces consumerist and post-materialist values. Instead of endorsing the environmentalism which appeals for a change of the current over-consumption lifestyle in capitalist development, the corporate green advertising strategically integrates lineages from green discourse of ecological modernization and political discourse of neoliberalism. In addition to similarities, dissimilarities existing between discourses from MNCs’ and Chinese local firms are identified in two aspects: greenness integration and greenness level. The differences in advertising discourses derive from both organizational resources and firms’ embedded economic, historical, and social-cultural contexts. Such differences prove the mutual constitutive or dialectical relationship between language and society and develop the argument that although firms play active role in constructing discourse, and green advertising discourse can be seen as corporations’ discursive approach to achieve environmental governance, their discourse is nevertheless constrained by both organizational internal and external influences.

A company can create a socially responsible image by having the public associate it (the company) with corporate social responsibility (CSR). Many researchers have asserted that a socially responsible image benefits a company in many ways. Zenisek (1979) clarified the complexity of CSR by approaching the concept through an organizational behavior approach. He constructed a CSR model that consisted of critical aspects—the ideological, operational, and societal aspects–in the relationship between a company and society. By applying Zenisek’s (1979) CSR model, this study conducts a content analysis of the corporate website homepages of Fortune Global 500 companies. The objective is to explore the variability in creating a socially responsible image through CSR communication by revenue, industry category, and country-of-origin. The results indicate that there are differences in communicating CSR aspects of CSR as well as CSR issues according to a company’s revenue, industry category, and country-of-origin. The study provides fresh insights for practitioners to approach CSR communication in business. / text

Oil and Gas companies have the inevitable need to operate in a global environment and therefore have a global reach. This thesis seeks to understand the nature and degree of localisation of the websites in this industry. This thesis introduces two notions of ‘global’, and seeks to examine the relationship between them: the first of which is the Global reach or operations of companies and the second is where a company’s communication is localised in language and cultural terms. A company can be seen to be ‘global’ in one of these two notions and it is this relationship that this thesis seeks to explore. The contribution of this thesis firstly, is that it adds to previous studies of website localisation, which have focused primarily on consumer goods and the retail industry, by examining a different kind of industry. Secondly, it takes into account the important semiotic and symbolic dimensions of language and culture when looking at localisation practices. The thesis thus contributes to the growing literature on website localisation and practices in Multinational companies. This study was carried out on 387 corporate and country specific websites of 16 Oil and Gas Companies to understand the extent and nature of their localisation practises particularly the way that language and culture are presented. The websites were studied using a qualitative and quantitative research design which involved carrying out a linguistic/semiotic analysis and a cultural analysis to give a balanced perspective of localisation practices. The conclusions of the study were that the companies operated a ‘glocal’ strategy, a combination of both a localised and a globalised (standardised) strategy. The companies had a combination of globally standardised features such as the website layouts, images, colour schemes, logos and the use of global celebrities on their websites and a limited degree of localisation where the ‘local’ is signified by local country websites, local news stories, local languages, local celebrities, images of local sights, images of company’s local office buildings and local petrol stations.

Numerous prior studies examining the relationship between Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and corporate financial performance have produced mixed results. Consumers expect alignment between corporation's CSR and business activities, yet a paucity of research examines the nature of CSR activities as related to corporate financial performance. Corporate leaders lack direction as to what CSR activities are most impactful. CSR is grounded in stakeholder theory, ethical work climate, and servant leadership theories. The relationship between self-interest in CSR activities, an index of alignment between business activities and CSR activities, and financial performance as measured by return on assets (ROA), return on equity (ROE), and change in market value added (MVA) as a percentage of assets has been underresearched. This study examined the financial performance of 77 companies from the 2014 Fortune 500. Information for the construct of self-interest in CSR activities was obtained from the websites of the sample companies. Correlational analysis was used to examine the relationship between self-interest in CSR activities and financial performance metrics. Multiple regression was used to control for firm size, industry, and CSR perception. Self-interest in CSR activities was found to be a significant predictor of both ROA and ROE, and was not found to be a significant predictor of change in MVA as a percentage of assets. This study contributes to positive social change by helping to illustrate a business case for CSR, providing leaders with incentive to invest in socially responsible activities in line with their business activities. Increased CSR activity directly benefits the most marginalized in a society, including those populations who lack voice.

近年來，網際網路發展迅速，公共關係人員利用網路媒體向利益關係人進行溝通已為必然之勢。孫秀蕙曾以2003年台灣五百大服務業之企業網站做為分析樣本，建立可供衡量的企業網站公關效果指標。奠基於此，本文將以2010年《天下雜誌》1000大企業大調查資料中的500大服務業作為研究樣本，將「企業網站公關效果評估指標」界定為「營利性組織透過網站與目標公眾進行溝通的表現程度」，用內容分析法來了解目前服務業設置網路媒體之現況，進而分析各種經營與發展的可能性；並透過個案訪談，以了解企業經營網路媒體的模式究竟為何，其操作細節又是如何。 本研究以Esrock & Leichty對企業網站內容之架構為基礎，將功能與技術指標合併，並新增互動性指標，共分為目標公眾內容、網站功能與互動性三構面，與組織性因素（產業別、員工人數、營業額、有無上市等）進行交叉研究，以了解組織性因素對於網站公關效果可能的影響。 研究發現，時間因素不影響組織性因素與網站建置之關係，但公共議題討論之發展隨時間影響有所改變。本研究推估營業額較小的企業，因其所擁有媒體資源較少，故更積極大膽運用網路媒體。而大企業在資訊發佈上考量較多，在網路策略上則較為保守。整體言，企業越來越重視網路媒體，各種內容與運用形式隨時間與科技發展更趨完善。 / With advances in technology, the terrain of public relations practices needs to be re-defined as new media bring about substantial changes in communication patterns. Based on the framework Hsiu-hui Sun had established in 2003, which attempts to measure the effectiveness of corporate website, this study used quantitative content analysis to assess current Taiwan's top 500 corporate of service industry's effectiveness of public relations on online media which are defined as the degree of performance level for corporations’ internet communication. In addition, a case study is conducted to understand the rationale and operational details of the online corporate public relations. Adopting the theoretical framework from Esrock & Leichty, this study combines the functional and technical indicators and categorizes them into three dimensions, including target audience contents, interface features, and degree of interaction. Because past research found that the size and resources of organizations were positively related to their overall performance, including the quality of public relations efforts. Therefore, in the present study we posit that target audience contents, interface features, and degree of interaction as indicators of public relations effectiveness are associated with organizational resourcefulness (i.e., factors). Findings suggest that time factor does not affect the relationship between organizational factors and the presence of website. However, time factor is relevant to the awareness of the importance of corporate social responsibility. We conclude that small business with fewer media resources tends to leverage internet media more progressively. On the contrary, big corporations are more conservative toward utilizing the Internet. To sum up, corporations nowadays take the role of the Internet media more seriously. The content and applications of the Internet become more important for business communication as time and technology evolves.