Religion matters: explicating religion’s underexamined role in corporate social advocacy (CSA) conceptualization and research

ABSTRACT Corporate social advocacy (CSA) is an emerging framework in public relations research that is receiving increased scholarly attention; however, we find that in light of the fact that CSA applies a narrow application of the term “corporate” and tends to focus on progressive/left-leaning issues and corporations at the expense of understanding potential similarities and differences of organizations managing contentious issues across the political spectrum, the current CSA framework needs further nuance to better capture publics’ or consumers’ motivations for proposed actions they take in response to CSA efforts. This essay addresses these limitations and advances the CSA framework by foregrounding religious conviction and the role it plays in CSA efforts. We argue that religion generally and religious conviction specifically in CSA warrant further study, as such investigations offer the potential for making CSA a more robust conceptual framework.