The moral foundations of responsible business: Using computational text analysis to explore the salience of morality in CSR communication

Morality is an integral part of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). However, the academic debate so far has mostly stated the importance of morality from a purely theoretical perspective, without empirically assessing it. We, therefore, draw on the moral foundations dictionary to conduct an automated content analysis of corporations’ (N = 277) annual CSR reports (N = 5010) over a period of 22 years. Looking into Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States, we investigated morality salience, differences across sectors, countries, and over time as well as the association of morality with different stakeholder groups. Results inform the broader debate on CSR and morality and highlight avenues for future research. •We analyzed morality salience in CSR communication of 22 years and 3 countries.•Results overall show stable salience of morality over time.•U.S. CSR is different from UK and Germany, using more morality-references.•Fairness is identified as a moral foundation separating different sectors.