Practice what you preach, but should you preach what you practice? Dynamic interplays between corporate social responsibility action and communication

Although corporate social responsibility (CSR) has become a societal and business imperative, strategic and ethical uncertainty remains regarding how best to leverage CSR to enhance stakeholders’ evaluations while minimizing scrutiny. This experimental study (n = 609) investigates the effects of internal CSR actions and external CSR communication on consumer publics’ perceptions and behavioral intentions across three CSR contexts: labor, environment, and LGBTQ+ inclusion. We find that internal CSR actions heighten perceptions of corporate sincerity and commitment to CSR while reducing corporate hypocrisy perceptions. Conversely, external CSR communication increases perceived CSR commitment at the risk of damaging corporate sincerity and arousing hypocrisy perceptions. As supported by the CSR decoupling literature, legitimacy theory, and cognitive dissonance theory, our findings highlight the dynamic interplay between internal CSR action and external CSR communication and its nuanced differences across CSR contexts. Specifically, internal CSR actions without external communication (i.e., CSR-hushing) may backfire by provoking hypocrisy perceptions, subsequently damaging organizational legitimacy. In contrast, external CSR communication without congruent internal actions (i.e., CSR-washing) culminates in stronger hypocrisy perceptions and lower sincerity perceptions compared to staying silent. This misalignment adversely affects stakeholders’ behavioral intentions. Our findings illuminate the CSR marketing and public relations dilemmas that firms face in today’s complex and often contradictory institutional environment. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.