IMT School for Advanced Studies, Lucca, Italy.
DSMN & ECLT, Università Ca' Foscari, Mestre (Ve), Italy.
PLoS One. 2021 Jul 27;16(7):e0254748. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0254748. eCollection 2021.
This paper offers insights on the major issues and challenges firms face in the Covid-19 pandemic and their concerns for Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) themes. To do so, we investigate large Italian firms' discussions on Twitter in the first nine months of the pandemic. Specifically, we ask: How is firms' Twitter discussion developing during the Covid-19 pandemic? Which CSR dimensions and topics do firms discuss? To what extent do they resonate with the public? We downloaded Twitter posts by the accounts of large Italian firms, and we built the bipartite network of accounts and hashtags. Using an entropy-based null model as a benchmark, we projected the information contained in the network into the accounts layers, identifying a network of accounts. We find that the network is composed of 13 communities and accounts at the core of the network focus on environmental sustainability, digital innovation, and safety. Firms' ownership type does not seem to influence the conversation. While the relevance of CSR hashtags and stakeholder engagement is relatively small, peculiarities arise in some communities. Overall, our paper highlights the contribution of online social networks and complex networks methods for management and strategy research, showing the role of online social media in understanding firms' issues, challenges, and responsibilities, with common narratives naturally emerging from data.
本文探讨了企业在新冠疫情期间面临的主要问题和挑战，以及他们对企业社会责任（CSR）主题的关注。为此，我们调查了疫情前九个月意大利大型企业在 Twitter 上的讨论。具体来说，我们提出了以下问题：企业在新冠疫情期间的 Twitter 讨论是如何发展的？企业讨论了哪些 CSR 维度和主题？它们在多大程度上与公众产生共鸣？我们下载了意大利大型企业账户的 Twitter 帖子，并构建了账户和标签的二分网络。我们使用基于熵的空模型作为基准，将网络中的信息投影到账户层，识别出一个账户网络。我们发现，该网络由 13 个社区组成，网络核心的账户关注环境可持续性、数字创新和安全。企业的所有制类型似乎并不影响对话。虽然 CSR 标签和利益相关者参与的相关性相对较小，但在某些社区中出现了一些特殊情况。总的来说，本文强调了在线社交网络和复杂网络方法在管理和战略研究中的贡献，展示了在线社交媒体在理解企业问题、挑战和责任方面的作用，共同的叙述自然从数据中浮现。
