Abstract

Corporate social performance (CSP) has been studied extensively by business and society scholars, yet most approaches to its measurement continue to be ambiguous, controversial and difficult to use (Wood, 2010). In this paper, we propose measuring CSP via the construct of stakeholder satisfaction through social media like Facebook and Twitter. We argue that the satisfaction of stakeholder expectations can be explained with organizational justice theory particularly in the exercise of voice by stakeholders when they perceive unjust behavior on the part of the firm. We test our idea using event study methodology with a sample of 5,440 observations from ten U.S. companies: We found some evidence for the sensitivity of social media to social events of interest to Twitter users.