Conventional quantitative methods for the measurement of organizational legitimacy consider mainly three sources that make judgments about organizations visible: news media, accreditation bodies, and surveys. Over the last decade, however, social media have enabled ordinary citizens to bypass the gatekeeping function of these institutional evaluators and autonomously make individual judgments public. This inclusion of voices beyond functional and formally organized stakeholder groups potentially pluralizes the ongoing discussions about organizations. The individual judgments in blogs, tweets, and Facebook posts give indication about the broader fit between an organization’s perceived behavior and heterogeneous social norms and therefore constitute an indicator of organizational legitimacy that can be accessed and measured. We propose the use of social media data and sentiment analysis to study the affect-based responses to organizational actions by citizens. We critically discuss and compare the method with existing quantitative methods for legitimacy measurement and apply them to a recent case in the banking industry. We discuss the value of the method for studying the process of legitimacy construction as the expression and negotiation of normative judgments about organizations by various evaluators.

We are at a turning point in the debate on the ethics of Artificial Intelligence (AI) because we are witnessing the rise of general‐purpose AI text agents such as GPT‐3 that can generate large‐scale highly refined content that appears to have been written by a human. Yet, a discussion on the ethical issues related to the blurring of the roles between humans and machines in the production of content in the business arena is lacking. In this conceptual paper, drawing on agenda setting theory and stakeholder theory, we challenge the current debate on the ethics of AI and aim to stimulate studies that develop research around three new challenges of AI text agents: automated mass manipulation and disinformation (i.e., fake agenda problem), massive low‐quality content production (i.e., lowest denominator problem) and the creation of a growing buffer in the communication between stakeholders (i.e., the mediation problem).

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide a picture of the practice of corporate social responsibility (CSR) communication among the top 300 companies in Switzerland and to investigate how favorable the cultural context is for this kind of communication. Design/methodology/approach – The investigation of the top 300 companies in Switzerland was conducted using a written survey that built on previous studies. Findings – CSR communication in Switzerland appears to be well developed, but still has broad margins for development. Examples are provided on how to improve CSR communication. Such improvements should be relatively easy to implement since Switzerland, it is argued, appears to be open to CSR communication. Research limitations/implications – The investigation considered only the communication objectives toward a limited range of stakeholders, such as clients, shareholders, and employees. The survey was conducted among the top 300 companies in Switzerland; these companies are not necessarily representative of the whole Swiss business community. Practical implications – The paper describes the elements that should be considered in order to develop an effective CSR communication. These elements are synergies between issues, objectives, and channels; criteria for a credible social report; the exploitation of the potentialities of CSR advertising and the web; and the understanding of the national context where the organization is operating. Originality/value – This paper focuses on CSR communication, an area that has received limited attention in CSR research. Organizations may find interesting hints on how to develop effective CSR communication.