Informing About CSR Initiatives on the Corporate Website or Staying Invisible? SMEs in Controversial and Non-Controversial Industries

This paper studies the communication of the corporate social responsibility (CSR) behaviour of 1054 Italian small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Manufacturing companies in controversial industries have a greater propensity to communicate corporate CSR practices, and CSR information increases with firm size, but only slightly. At the same time, the empirical analysis shows that companies in controversial industries have a lower probability of having a website. This raises issues regarding the propensity of controversial firms to set up a website, since it could expose them to public scrutiny and criticism.