The evolution of CSR communication on the Internet

The aim of the paper is to investigate whether and how corporate social responsibility (CSR) communication on corporate websites has changed over time. The attention is focused on the identification of trends regarding not only the diffusion of contents related to CSR, but also the nature of information disclosed and the use of interactive potentialities offered by the Internet. The paper presents an inter-temporal analysis of a sample of companies that at the beginning of the study were listed on the Italian Stock Exchange. Results show an increase in the use of the Internet for disclosing information regarding different CSR issues and an improvement in terms of kind of information disclosed and use of interactive tools. However, at the end of the period of analysis, there is still a relevant heterogeneity among sample companies and there seem to be different trajectories of evolution of online CSR communication. More precisely, companies that initially limited their disclosures to descriptive information turn out to be the most static. These findings seem to testify the presence of different kind of responses to pressures concerning CSR reporting, and, in particular, the coexistence of substantive and symbolic adoption of disclosure practices by Italian companies