Impact of corporate social responsibility on reputation - Insights from tweets on sustainable development goals by CEOs

Abstract Social media had been extensively used for communication and networking purposes among corporates. Literature indicates social media platforms had also been used by the firms for building relationship with different stakeholders (i.e. customers, employees, investors and neighbouring communities). But there exists a gap in literature, whether social capital present on social media can be used for building corporate reputation (CR) in the society. Literature indicates corporate social responsibility (CSR) impacts CR. Therefore this study explores how CSR messages on social media impacts CR. For this study assumption was made that all the concerns and issues raised by Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are the social responsibilities of the CEOs. The study tries to explore this gap by analysing the tweets posted by two group of CEOs, i.e. CEOs in top 200 fortune companies and top 100 social influencer CEOs. Top 100 social influencer CEOs on social media were identified from the Hootsuite.com. Social influencer CEOs are having tremendous amount of influence on Twitter. The statistically test performed on the two group of the CEOs depicts there is significant difference in the number of CSR messages posted by fortune CEOs and social influencer CEOs. Results reveals social influencer CEOs had posted 5.97 times more CSR messages on Twitter as compared to fortune CEOs, which in turn may had led to better CR, in terms of shares and likes by social capital present on Twitter. The study reveals may be social influencer CEOs through CSR messages are trying to engage stakeholders strategically on Twitter. This is an open question at present, therefore future researchers can explore this in more details. The managerial implication of the study for CEOs and firms had been highlighted in the study.

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