CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY AND ACTIVISM: AN EPISTEMOLOGICAL TENDENCY IN RELATIONAL AREA

Held high at this time and age, with its financial, legal, ethical and social (charity) aspects the corporate social responsibility that is crucial as a requirement and prime indication of corporate citizenship, is embraced and practiced not only to cater to individuals’ perception, but also in order for corporate organizations to gain acquisitions and fend off negativities. Activism is one of the basic driving forces for such acquisitions and negativities. Corporations may end up having to face movements of activism, unless they display sufficient responsiveness to target audience’s expectations, wishes and complaints while performing their operations and their primary objective. Considering these factors, activism becomes a fact that corporate organizations cannot afford to ignore during the course of their operations. Within this context, the study aims to explore the various dimensions of social responsibility and its relation to activism. The aforementioned relation, which was depicted from a theoretical perspective, manifests itself quite clearly in the Colorado coal strikes -one of the very first case studies presented from a public relations point of view- and the Deepwater Horizon explosion -one of the latest examples. The study discusses, justifies and presents findings as to how corporations may have had chosen to practice the social responsibility aspect or put emphasis on charity as the most favored and acceptable aspect in order to eliminate movements of activism from the past to the present