Communicating Moral Responsibility: Stakeholder Capitalism, Types, and Perceptions

Saheli Goswami and Gargi Bhaduri ()
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Saheli Goswami: Department of Textiles, Fashion Merchandising and Design, College of Business, University of Rhode Island, 55 Lower College Road, Kingston, RI 02881, USA
Gargi Bhaduri: Shannon Rogers and Jerry Silverman School of Fashion Merchandising and Design, Kent State University, 218 H Rockwell Hall, Kent, OH 44242, USA

Sustainability, 2023, vol. 15, issue 5, 1-17

Abstract: With stakeholder capitalism being the new mantra for corporate moral responsibility, the question of how corporations’ moral commitments inconsistent with their executions would variably influence internal and external stakeholders and for different types of stakeholder capitalism issues remains unanswered. Using a 2 (inconsistency: present/absent) × 2 (stakeholder: internal/external) × 5 (stakeholder-capitalism issues: worker/environment/shareholder/customer/community) between-subjects experiment, this study investigated the variable impact on stakeholders’ corporate hypocrisy perceptions. With data collected from 1296 U.S. stakeholders, ANOVA results revealed that corporate moral responsibility messages-action inconsistency generates hypocrisy among stakeholders such that external stakeholders, namely consumers, experienced higher hypocrisy than internal ones, namely employees. The context of corporate moral responsibility (i.e., the types of stakeholder-capitalism issues) did not moderate resulting perceptions, but these issues directly impacted hypocrisy perceptions. These perceptions varied between external and internal stakeholders for different issues; the highest hypocrisy was recorded for shareholders and workers issues. Thus, the focus of this research was foregrounded on corporations’ moral responsibilities perceived as inconsistent with their execution to present a comparative analysis of different groups of stakeholders’ responses and devise effective solutions.

Keywords: corporate moral responsibility; message-action inconsistency; external stakeholders; consumers; internal stakeholders; employees; stakeholder capitalism; perceived corporate hypocrisy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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