Corporate Social Advocacy in Crisis Contexts: Risks, Rewards, and Resilience

Research on corporate social advocacy (CSA), also known as brand activism, has evolved significantly over the past decade. CSA often plunges corporations into polarizing debates, profoundly altering the corporate communication landscape. While these practices saw a significant increase in the early 21st century, in recent years corporations have increasingly retreated from them, primarily due to financial, legal, and political backlash. In extreme cases, taking a public stance on controversial issues can escalate into major corporate crises, forcing organizations to quickly pivot from a proactive, value-based campaign into a reactive crisis communication effort to mitigate damage. As corporations navigate this volatile environment, understanding the intersection of CSA and crisis communication has become imperative for scholars in communication, public relations, advertising, and marketing.This Research Topic aims to address this gap by examining how the intersection of corporate social advocacy (CSA) with polarizing sociopolitical environments influences internal and external stakeholder reactions and, in turn, organizational resilience. As corporations increasingly navigate the abrupt shift from proactive, value-based campaigns to reactive crisis communication, understanding how the positive and negative effects of CSA unfold is crucial for building adaptive capacity. Resilience in this context is not solely a function of traditional public relations but also hinges on internal communication, and the ways organizational structures adapt to internal dissent and external backlash. However, studying these complex challenges requires interdisciplinary approaches that bridge organizational communication, public relations, and advertising, and marketing. Thus, this Research Topic seeks to identify and circulate theoretical frameworks and empirical approaches that can be applied across disciplines to analyze CSA-generated crises more holistically. By integrating insights from organizational communication, employee relations, crisis communication, and brand activism, this collection will help build a shared methodological and theoretical foundation for managing modern corporate advocacy. We welcome original research, theoretical frameworks, case studies, and methodological innovations that address the complex intersection of corporate social advocacy (CSA) and crisis communication. This collection aims to foster interdisciplinary dialogue and encourage submissions from various disciplines.Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:• interdisciplinary and methodological approaches to evaluating the positive and negative effects of CSA on internal and external stakeholder relations, organizational identification, and brand equity• strategic risk assessments and the factors influencing a corporation’s vulnerability to political, legal, and financial backlash• theoretical and practical frameworks for managing the rapid transition from proactive, value-based campaigns to reactive crisis communication• the role of internal and external digital technology and systems in accelerating or mitigating CSA-generated reputational threats• cross-cultural, organizational culture, and institutional contingencies shaping CSA interpretation and outcomes in diverse sociopolitical environments. Topic editors: Ziyuan Zhou, Yafei Zhang Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/82172/corporate-social-advocacy-in-crisis-contexts-risks-rewards-and-resilience