On the Discursive Construction of Corporate Social Responsibility in Advertising Agencies

As the interest in corporate social responsibility (CSR) within advertising industry is growing, this paper explores the discourse on CSR among employees in advertising agencies. Different sensemaking dimensions are taken into account to examine how employees, as one of the key stakeholders involved in the joint meaning construction, make sense of CSR. In addition, this paper studies the legitimation approaches that employees use to address CSR of advertising agencies. The empirical evidence of discursive examples also indicates that there is a linkage between sensemaking and legitimation perspective in CSR discourse analysis and supports the idea that both may be a potential route toward institutionalization of CSR inside organizations or sectors.     

Minimum Service Requirements, Limited Brokers and Menuing of Services

In the past few years, many states have responded to the increasing number of limited service brokers by passing minimum service requirements. Limited service brokers can be viewed as those brokers who are offering their marketing and representative services A La Carte as opposed to the more traditional full-services brokers offering of a Table D??h?te (one size fits all) for their services. Supporters claim the legislation is necessary to protect consumers who are otherwise hurt by limited service brokers, but critics assert that this legislation is anti-competitive and not necessary. This study provides empirical evidence that sellers using limited service brokers experience a trade-off between a higher selling price and longer marketing spans with accompanying lower probabilities of finding a buyer during a given marketing period.