COMR2005 Project Proposal: Social Media Strategies of B Corporations

This project proposal outlines a study that will analyze the communication strategies employed by B Corporations in Australia and New Zealand on social media platforms, particularly Facebook. The research aims to explore how these organizations communicate their social and environmental responsibilities and the significance of social media in their sustainability efforts. The study will investigate the use of Facebook to reach consumers, promote corporate social responsibility, and enhance brand image. The methodology involves collecting data from B Corps' social media posts, classifying them into categories (Environment, Workers, Customers, Community, and Governance), and analyzing the content from January 1, 2017, to October 31, 2017. The research questions address the communication methods used by B Corporations and the impact of social media on their sustainability. The literature review discusses the Gray Sector, the importance of social media for competitive advantage, and the role of transparency in building trust with consumers. The project will provide insights into how B Corporations leverage social media to connect with consumers, promote their values, and contribute to a more sustainable business model.

COMR2005 Capstone Project
Assessment 2 - Project Proposal

Contents
Introduction.......................................................................................................................................2
Research aim..................................................................................................................................... 3
Research question...........................................................................................................................3
Rationale of research question................................................................................................. 3
Literature review............................................................................................................................ 4
Research methodology................................................................................................................. 7
Research plan.................................................................................................................................... 9
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................... 9
References:...................................................................................................................................... 10
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Introduction
This study will analyze the communication strategies used by the B
corporations in Australia and New Zealand through the social media. Corporate
social responsibility has been included in most of the organizations for a long
time (Plerhoples, 2013). However, B corporations are organization, which are
approving the corporate social responsibility and are certified by the as an
organization who has gone green and is making considerable amount of
contribution to the corresponding environment and the society. The benefit
corporations have been considered as a different form of organisation by various
researcher and falls under category of gray sector organisation. These
organizations are trying to enhance the corporate social responsibility aspect in
the modern organization (Stecker, 2016). This organisation are incorporating
triple bottom line in to their business model and providing equal importance to
corporate social responsibility as the first bottom line (Corkery, Mikalsen, &
Allan, 2017). The primary interests of the organisation are to ensure profitability
and fulfilling the objectives of the stakeholders (Yosifon, 2016). The inclusion of
the corporate social responsibility in to the bottom line means that the
organisation will use tools for measuring their impact on the society and the
corresponding environment. The benefit Corporation and B corps have lot of
similarities and they are similar to each other. However, there are some basic
differences between Benefit corporations and certified B Corporations. The
benefit corporation’s performances are self-reported whereas in case of B Corps
they will have to achieve a verified score on impact assessment (Kwok & Yu,
2013). The benefit corporations in the states of U.S. but the B Corps are available
for all business organizations irrespective of the corporate structure of the
organization. Moreover, the role of B Lab in the Benefit corps is minimal as they
only develop models for the legislation and offers tool, which can be used for
reporting purposes. However, the B Lab oversees all the B Corps by providing
them with support with various services as portfolio management
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Research aim
The research aims to explore and analyze the methods used by the benefit
corporations to communicate with the public through Facebook social media.
The use of Facebook social media is necessary for the organizations as it
facilitates in reaching more number of consumers. Moreover, promoting the
corporate social responsibility of the organisation will improve the brand image
and help in maximization of the revenue.
Research question
How do B Corporation Australia and New Zealand communicate their
social and environmental responsibility trough social media? And what is the
significance of social media in sustainability of the B Corporation?
Rationale of research question
Social media is important for the sustainability of the organizations in the
market and the companies will have to make use of it they want to gain
competitive advantage in the market (Kumar & Greene, 2017). The research
questions are developed in accordance to the objective of the study and will
facilitate in evaluation all the aspect of the research topic. The research
questions will provide the different dimension to the study and will provide a
wider view of the practices of the B Corporations in Australia and New Zealand.
The first research question will identify the various platforms that are being used
and the second question will identify the impact of the social media on these
Gray Sector organizations.
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Literature review
The Benefits Corporation belongs to a fourth sector, which is called the
Gray Sector (André, 2012). These organizations have the characteristics of both
the private and the public sector companies and have complex structures. These
organizations have crossed the traditions borders to incorporate multiple
bottom lines in to the organization (Steingard & Clark, 2016). This has blurred
the lines between the private and the public sectors, as these possess
characteristics of both types of organization. These organizations follow all the
rules and regulations of the government and board of directors of the
organizations are hired by the government (André, 2015). These organizations
have close relations with the government but consist of elements of the private
organizations.
Social media has emerged as one of the platforms for promoting the
organizational practices and interacting with the consumers in the market. The
use of the social media is necessary for the gaining competitive advantage in the
market (Hiller, 2013). The organizations are promoting their products and the
unique selling propositions to attract the consumers. Therefore, highlighting of
the corporate social responsibility activities will provide the organization with a
better image in the market. Thus, it is important for the organizations to
communicate their corporate social responsibility activities (Stubbs, 2017). The
negative aspects of an organization spreads faster than the positive ones so it is
essential for the organization to give a push to their initiatives so that they can
make use of this factors for gaining competitive advantage in the market
(Loewenstein, 2016).
The social media is a powerful medium and the organizations try to be
bold about their activities and the good they are trying to bring in to the society
and corresponding environment (Whelan, Moon & Grant, 2013). The managers
of the organizations are being open about the policies and the activities in the
organization. However, the traditional form of media is quite expensive so the
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companies use the online media platform for communicating their social and
environmental responsibilities to the society (Whelan, Moon & Grant, 2013). The
advent of web 2.0 has changed the overall scenario and people are easily
connected to the different parts of the world. This provides the organizations
with the opportunity of reaching wider range of consumers. The most popular
social media platforms include Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. The number of
enrolments in Facebook is increasing rapidly and has the ability of reaching
variety of people (Vogel, Rose, Okdie, Eckles & Franz, 2015). This helps to
maintain transparency, which enables open criticism for the society to ensure
that the organization can make better efforts. Moreover, it provides the
opportunity of providing opinions and justification for their respective action so
that the society can understand the perspective of the organization (Razmerita,
Kirchner & Nabeth, 2014).
Environmental and social sustainability issues are the major concerns for
the organizations in the market. Thus, it has become necessary for the
organizations to portray them as ethical organizations by providing evidence of
their social and environmental concerns. These suggest that the organizations
are making an effort in including triple bottom line in to the business model of
the organization (Olorunnisola & Martin, 2013). These has lead to the
development t of organization which are of hybrid in nature which are suppose
to focus on the benefit of the public by maintaining the goals and objectives of
the stakeholders in the market. Thus, it can be seen that there is change in the
paradigm of most of the organization, which are adopting social and
environmental factors into the main bottom line of the organization (Lyon &
Montgomery, 2013). Thus, the B lab, being nonprofit organization is provi8din g
support to the Benefit Corporations and certifying the B corps for maintaining
high standards in the field of environmental and social sustainability.
B corporations are the organizations who have orientation towards
making success and their strategies are developed in order to meet that need.
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The adaption of changing the organizational structure in being a B Corp is
beneficial for all the companies in the market as they are able to develop a
network very easily and helps in the improvement of the image of the
organization (Nicholas & Sacco, 2016). This is because of the fact that there is
consumers prefer organization who tries to give back something to the society
and the corresponding environment. Social media is a platform, which provides
transparency, and majority of the consumers try to reach the companies
regarding environmental and social issues (Cao, Gehman, & Grimes, 2017). The
social media is used to reach moer number of consumers from different parts of
the world as the same time. Thus, social media is used for providing better reach
to the companies in the market where they aim to highlight all the bottom lines
of the organization (Winkler & Portocarrero, 2017). However, it is essential to
bridge, communicate and connect your impact with the consumers in the market
and social media is an effective medium that can be used for fulfilling this
purpose. Initially the organizations will have to us eo the social media to bridge
the gap between the consumers and the organization. The organization will have
to communicate the impact of the organization on the society and the
environment so that the awareness of the consumers can be elevated
(Tkachenko, Wingate & Cahill, 2016). Moreover, this will enable the organization
to connect to more and more consumers in the market, which will be able to
generate more impact on the corresponding society. The organizations are
positioned in such a way so that there are able to excel in interaction with the
society in an effective manner (Verbos & Black, 2017).
Moreover, it helps in effective cross-cultural promotion and the
products used by the consumers are given feedbacks, which helped them to
provide free publicity and advertisements for the organizations. The certification
of being a B Corp gives credibility to the organization, which helps them to grab
the attention of more number of consumers in the market (Bauer & Umlas,
2017). Similarly, social media provides visibility to the organizations, which
facilitates in improving the brand image of the organization. Social media is used
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for deepening of the impact of the social and environmental activities of the
organization (Brewster & Cerdin, 2018). The dragon fly effect is a phenomenon
which helps to improve the impact of the social media by spreading the message
in the effective way. The social media is used for developing the brand and
spreading its name to all parts of the world. Thus, the organization can attract
talented recruits who can improve the quality of the workforce (Elving et al.,
2015). Thus, social media provides the organizations with competitive advantage
in the market and the overall impact on the community is huge.
Research methodology
Research methodology is one of the most important parts of the study, as
it will help to identify the factors that will be used for the development of the
research method (Green & Thorogood, 2014). The various approaches and
research methods will be discussed thoroughly to understand the plan of action.
The methodology will consist of fixed set of paradigms, which will be used to
conduct the study. The methodology of the research will be validated to analyze
the precision and the accuracy of the study (Green & Thorogood, 2014; Taylor,
Bogdan & DeVault, 2015). This is an exploratory study and is conducted to
ensure a better understanding of the topic. The study will highlight the issues
which have not been analyzed till now.
Methodology
The research methodology will be use on this research is Collect the data from 20
the companies who are already member od B Corps trough Facebook or Twitter
stats social media positing by looking each company’s posting that whether on
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the 5 Categories of B corps which are Environment, Workers, Customers,
Community and Governance.
The period of the data will be based on from 1/1/2017 to 31/10/2017.
Each posting will be classifying into 5 element categories. Each posting will be
looking on whether is on. The original post will be copy and paste on the paper
to be shown where information came from and be used as reference. Moreover,
the though each company will be counting how many each posting were talking
on 5 categories then at end the total of posting counts for each company will be
given.
The secondary analysis, which consist of creation of different themes,
which will be used to analyze the different case studies. The findings from each
of the case study will be analyzed to link with the objectives of the study so that
the existing theories can be validated (Clarke & Braun, 2013). The secondary
data will also consist of the research papers, journals and peer reviewed
journals, which would be analyzed to identify the significance of social media in
communicating their corporate social responsibilities (Vaismoradi et al., 2016).
The secondary analysis will consist of only one method that is known as mono
method. Qualitative analysis of the data will be used to identify the patterns
within the data that will provide a different dimension to the study (Han, 2015).
However, there are certain limitations to this study, as primary analysis of data is
not conducted. The study consists of secondary analysis of data so no sampling
methods will be used for the collection of the data. The reliability and validity of
the study is important factor as helps to prove that the study is authentic and
relevant. The same instruments can be used in multiple studies of similar types is
known as the reliability of the data. When the degree of reliability is high in the
data then it will provide positive results for the study (Bryman & Bell, 2015).
When all the research methods in the study are followed according to the
planned way then it is called the validity. In this study, the validity and reliability
of the study will be maintained so that the accurate findings can be generated.
However, in the case of academic and the business journals ethical ground will
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have to be maintained. The data that will be kept confidential and will not be
used in other study of similar types.
Research plan
Main activities/ stages Week1 Week2 Week3 Week4 Week
5
Week 6
Topic Selection 
Data collection from
secondary sources
 
Framing layout of the research 
Literature review   
Formation of the research Plan  
Selection of the Appropriate
Research Techniques
 
Primary data collection  
Analysis & Interpretation of
Data Collection
 
Conclusion of the Study 
Formation of Rough Draft 
Submission of Final Work 
Conclusion
Therefore, throughout this study, a research will make sure that the
relevant methods will be followed for the analysis of the study. The structure
that has been established will have to be maintained to identify the significance
of social on corporations.
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