Communicating corporate social responsibility to maximize business profits

Corporations are experiencing increased pressure to focus more on a stakeholder value while still being good corporate citizens.  Engaging in corporate social responsibility (CSR) endeavors can improve the bottom-line by building and strengthening stakeholder relationships.  Low awareness of CSR will dilute the long-term attempt to maximizing business profits.  A conceptual framework of CSR communication was used to analyze how the Aerospace and Defense Industry communicates their CSR initiatives to stakeholders.  A Qualitative Content Analysis was used to examine the presence of online social platforms and the corporate reputations of the 10 Aerospace and Defense Organizations from the Fortune 500 list.   We conclude from the analysis that most companies are engaged in many CSR initiatives.  In addition, demonstrated that the CSR initiatives appear to be a good fit and relevant to their organization.  Nevertheless, while the results from the embedded cases showed the utilization of Social Media as a tool for interaction with customers, in communicating CSR initiatives, Social Media is clearly underutilized.