Hoftsede's cultural dimensions and corporate social responsibility in online communication: Are they independent constructs?

Despite the fact that culture is central in globalized and digitalized contexts, few studies have investigated how organizations are influenced by cultural dimensions in communicating their social responsibility efforts. Through the lens of cultural dimensions, this study aims at comparing communication displayed on corporate websites of top sustainable organizations. The aim is reached evaluating how Hofstede's cultural dimensions, reflected in corporate social responsibility (CSR) content, vary between companies in Asian context and other organizations worldwide. A coding scheme to analyze cultural impact on CSR communication content disclosed on websites was carried out. Findings show that Hofstede's cultural dimensions and online CSR communication belong to different levels of analysis: One is innate and diffusive, whereas the other one is intentional and rational. Differently from extant studies on cultural dimensions, results suggest that cultural dimensions are factors that should be analyzed as social aspects, whereas online CSR communication should instead be explored as strategic feature.