Journal of Economics, Business and Management, Vol. 1, No. 1, February 2013

Corporate Social Responsibility to Reflect Organization‟s Corporate Identity: A Content Analysis
Musdiana Mohamad Salleh, Nabsiah Abdul Wahid, and Malliga Marimuthu
 Abstract—The authors propose corporate social responsibility (CSR) as a useful element in reflecting an organization’s corporate identity (CI) to its target audiences. The inclusion of CSR highlights organization’s role as a ‘good’ citizen in society and is the basis for any beneficial exchanges between the parties. Content analyses on CSR of 10 top ranked Malaysian companies supported this proposition. Index Terms—Corporate social responsibility, corporate identity, content analysis.

effort in integrating their stakeholders‟ social and environmental expectations and/or concerns into their daily operations and their interaction with the stakeholders. B. Corporate Identity Corporate identity (CI) has been used as the basis for other various corporate level concepts like image, reputation or corporate communications; and is even considered fundamental in corporate marketing field [1]-[2]. The traditional VI perspective sees CI being used at the early stage of organization‟s operation as it becomes the mean for CI transmission e.g. through logos, brand images and other visual manifestations representing them [3]. CI has evolved from this definition from focusing only on the minor elements of the organization to now emphasizing more on the core businesses, strategy, structure and culture [4], hence the popularity of CI definition usage from the CP and CC perspectives; as these perspectives believe that CI is made up of more than the name and corporate logo [5]. For instance, proponents of CP consider CI to derive from beliefs and shared values of the members of the organization, that it is defined as a means of expressing the