Talk is also action, and practices are produced and reproduced in ongoing communicative action. Morsing and her colleagues Dennis Schoeneborn and Andy Crane refer to this as “t(w)alking”. 

As the emerging field of CSR grows, research has focused on the relationship between CSR communication – “talking” – and CSR practices – “walking”. But in the new article Pathways for Walking, Talking and T(w)alking, Mette Morsing and her colleagues demonstrate the opportunities of integrating constructive conversation into CSR work. 

Communication plays an important role 
Based on communication studies and socio-philosophical theories, the researchers distinguishes between three different formative views on the relationship between communications and practises: walking-to-talk, talking-to-walk, and t(w)alking. 

While the notions of walking-to-talk (most basically: communication about action to account for the past) and talking-to-walk (most basically: communication drives action to new commitments in the future) are well-known processes in CSR practice and literature, the authors suggest that talk and walk actually occur simultaneously, i.e. t(w)alking. 

Rather than seeing communication and action as two separate analytical categories where one informs another in a straight timeline, the new term makes us aware how organizational practices and structures come into being in discursive practices. It is an on-going process where CSR talk and CSR walk are joined together and push the organization forward. For organizations to evolve they engage in ongoing dialogue, feedback and guidance and these communications are central in constituting structures, roles, duties and power relations of the ‘real firm’. 

- In this perspective, communication is the pivotal point to not only set a CSR agenda to make action happen, but in this communication that is where CSR emerges. It is not ‘just communication’. It is real action, says Mette Morsing. 

Highlighting diversity in the workplace 
An example of t(w)alking is, for instance, an organization that has implemented diversity management as a CSR activity. By seeing how diverse voices inspire and influence each other and the way the organization functions, we get a better understanding of how CSR as a practice cannot be separated from these on-going conversations. 

- With our notion of t(w)alking we hope to highlight the fact that CSR communication is also CSR action. By collapsing the analytical divide between communication and action, we are able to better appreciate the important role of communication for the workings of strategies, practices and other organizational action. Hopefully our findings can be used as a compass to provide directions for future theoretical research and empirical studies in CSR and beyond, says Mette Morsing.

Interview by Emilie Eliasson Hovmöller