CSR/Sustainability and the Insider-Activist Public Relations Role

• In Event: CSR, Communication, and Public Perceptions

Abstract

This essay advances the insider-activist role for public relations via postmodern theorizing and applies it to the CSR/Sustainability arena. In-depth interviews with CSR/Sustainability professionals suggest that public relations practitioners could be a major driver of organizational reform required to advance responsibility- and sustainability-thinking. Recommendations are offered for empowering public relations practitioners to support ethical policy making and programming for CSR/Sustainability – as well as critique of public relations’ enduring attachment to one-way asymmetric publicity models and use of philanthropy as greenwash. While the insider-activist role for transforming organizations into more just and moral places may be an aspirational goal for public relations at present, it is a campaign worth waging. Fulfilling the insider-activist role could empower practitioners to navigate organizations toward more ethical behaviors and improve public relations’ reputation at the same time.

Author

• Donnalyn Pompper, Temple U