Public relations as a diversity management approach: a big-data examination of CSR strategies and activities for corporate LGBTQ advocacy

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PUBLIC RELATIONS AS A DIVERSITY MANAGEMENT APPROACH:
A BIG-DATA EXAMINATION OF CSR STRATEGIES AND ACTIVITIES
FOR CORPORATE LGBTQ ADVOCACY

A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF ARTS
(STRATEGIC PUBLIC RELATIONS)
May 2017

Copyright 2017 Yixiao (Alvin) Zhou
1
Acknowledgements
The thesis is dedicated to the social minorities whose unheard stories and unrealized
dreams paved the way of freedom for me and my contemporaries.
First and foremost, I would like to thank my chair and advisor Dr. Aimei Yang, whose
mentorship laid the foundations of my academic career. I also would like to thank all the faculty
members I have worked with in the past two years, including Dr. Robert Kozinets, Dr. Larry
Gross, Dr. Patricia Riley, Professor Joe Saltzman, and Professor Jennifer Floto. Your unreserved
support made this thesis possible.
Second, I would like to thank my friends who helped me through the graduate study,
especially Shen Pan, whose enthusiasm in activism inspired my current research interests, and
Adam Khan, who is the second coder of the content analysis and encouraged me along the way.
Third, I would like to express my gratitude to my parents, who approved my decision to
study communication and financially supported my education.
2
Table of Contents

Acknowledgements ......................................................................................................................... 1

Abstract ........................................................................................................................................... 3
Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 4
Literature Review ............................................................................................................................ 6
Corporate Social Responsibility ......................................................................................... 6
CSR Research in Public Relations .................................................................................... 11
Diversity Research in Public Relations ............................................................................. 14
LGBTQ Activism .............................................................................................................. 16
Methods......................................................................................................................................... 22
Data Collection ................................................................................................................. 22
Data Analysis .................................................................................................................... 25
Results ........................................................................................................................................... 29
Global CSR Topics ........................................................................................................... 29
NGO LGBTQ Advocacy Paradigm .................................................................................. 35
US CSR Topics and Practice ............................................................................................ 37
Case Study: Target and North Carolina HB2 Controversy ........................................................... 45
Method .............................................................................................................................. 45
North Carolina House Bill 2 Controversy ........................................................................ 46
Target’s House Bill 2 Involvement ................................................................................... 47
Further Research Questions .............................................................................................. 50
Discussion ..................................................................................................................................... 52

References ..................................................................................................................................... 57
Tables and Figures ........................................................................................................................ 70
Appendix A: Topic Modeling R Code .......................................................................................... 96
Appendix B: Content Analysis Coding Instruction ...................................................................... 99

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Abstract
Much communication and management scholarship has examined corporate social
responsibility (CSR) and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer (LGBTQ) community
separately. However, little attention was paid to explore LGBTQ issues in the context of CSR.
This thesis tried to fill this knowledge gap by comprehensively and comparatively examining
global and US corporate social responsibility strategies and activities for LGBTQ advocacy from
a public relations perspective. Three hundred and sixty-one annual CSR reports from Fortune
Global 500 companies and 308 annual CSR reports from Fortune US 500 companies were
collected to represent corporate LGBTQ values globally and in the US. Human Rights
Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index (CEI) report was used to represent non-profit LGBTQ
values. A big data analysis method—topic modeling, along with content analysis, was used to
analyze the data. Results showed topical and practical discrepancies of corporate LGBTQ
advocacy demonstrated by Fortune Global 500, Fortune US 500, and non-profit LGBTQ
organizations. In the wake of the scarcity of pragmatic LGBTQ advocacy activities in
economically affluent companies’ CSR narrative, a case study of Target’s involvement in North
Carolina House Bill 2 controversy was followed. Overall, this thesis developed the intersection
of CSR and LGBTQ research.
4
Introduction
LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer) issues have been sparking heated
social and political debates recently. Communication scholarship has followed the trend, and
examined the community in different social contexts, such as popular culture (e.g., Ng, 2013;
Schoonover, 2015; Shugart, 2003), online community (e.g., Bennett, 2014; Bond, 2009; Fox &
Warber, 2014), health communication (e.g., McKinley, Luo, Wright, & Kraus, 2014; Utamsingh,
Richman, Martin, Lattanner, & Chaikind, 2016), and information society (e.g., DeNardis &
Hackl, 2016; Szulc & Dhoest, 2013). With political debates and media coverage on this specific
issue dramatically increasing, corporate LGBTQ efforts are also getting scrutinized by the public.
Much communication scholarship has examined LGBTQ issues in the corporate context, but a
lot of them focused on business communication and marketing by which corporations tried to
capture the lucrative LGBT market (e.g., Campbell, 2005; Gudelunas, 2011; Oakenfull, 2013;
Um, Kim, Kwon, & Wilcox, 2015). Internal corporate LGBTQ activism and LGBTQ
stakeholders other than LGBTQ customers are left relatively unexamined.
Public relations scholarship, on the other hand, did not quite keep up with the expansion
of the scope of diversity issues (Tindall & Waters, 2012). Moreover, public relations scholars,
when examining diversity issues, tend to research diversity issues in the public relations industry
or public relations campaigns (e.g., Hon & Brunner, 2000; Tindall, 2013; Tindall & Waters,
2012; Toledano & Riches, 2014). However, it is important to recognize that “diversity in public
relations industry and campaigns” is not the only way public relations interacts with diversity.
For example, few research efforts have been made to understand public relations as an approach
to corporate diversity management.
5
More specifically, despite the fact that corporations’ diversity efforts are usually counted
as their corporate social responsibility (CSR) practice, public relations scholars haven’t
thoroughly examined the intersection of CSR and diversity. In light of the scarcity, this thesis,
focusing on LGBTQ diversity, and using Global/US Fortune 500 companies’ annual CSR reports
and non-profit LGBTQ organizations’ reports as raw data, tries to narrow the knowledge gap.
After reviewing communication and public relations scholars’ recent research on CSR
and LGBTQ issues, this thesis first used topic modeling—a big-data thematic analysis
approach—to present how global companies and US companies constructed the discourse around
corporate LGBTQ advocacy, which yields 7 global topics and 10 US topics. An analysis of the
differences among companies from different continents and industries was also conducted. After
articulating and comparing global and US discourses, the thesis turned to focus on the US
context.
A corporate LGBTQ advocacy paradigm, including recommended LGBTQ advocacy
strategies and activities, was first identified by analyzing the most recent Corporate Equality
Index (CEI) report published by the largest LGBTQ NGO in the United States—Human Rights
Campaign (HRC). The US LGBTQ CSR discourse was then compared with the paradigm to
identify the differences between for-profit and non-profit values. A content analysis was
conducted to examine if practical activities suggested by the paradigm were implemented by
corporations’ CSR practice.
In the wake of the lack of corporate commitment to LGBQT advocacy, a brief case study
was followed to introduce a case where a US Fortune 500 company engaged itself in a heated
national debate on a marginal LGBTQ issue, and reportedly made some financial compromise.
The research also calls for more qualitative research into this specific case.
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Literature Review
Corporate Social Responsibility
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is typically defined as corporations’ economic,
legal, ethical, and philanthropic responsibilities the society, in which they exist, expects them to
assume at a given point in time (A. B. Carroll, 1979; 1983; 1991). In a more pragmatic sense,
corporations, if fully undertaking these responsibilities, should strive to “make a profit, obey the
law, be ethical, and be a good corporate citizen” (A. B. Carroll, 1991, p. 43).
However, consensus about the definition has not been reached by management and public
relations scholars throughout the decades-long debate (van Marrewijk, 2003), partially due to its
extensive coverage and varied approaches of understanding. As Votaw (1972) claimed, “The
term [corporate social responsibility] is a brilliant one; it means something, but not always the
same thing, to everybody” (p. 25). One example of the questions that had been debated was
whether economic and legal responsibilities should be counted as corporate social
responsibilities. Opposite to Carroll’s proposition, Davis (1973) asserted “social responsibility
begins where the law ends” (p. 313), and thus denied legal obedience in the scope of CSR.
Friedman (1962) took an even more extreme stand and asserted that the only social responsibility
of business was to increase its profits. But as shown in the review below, most scholars have
agreed that corporate social responsibility exceeds corporations’ financial needs.
To better understand the concept of CSR, some relevant definitions of CSR put forward
after 1950s, as known as the modern era of CSR (A. B. Carroll, 1999), will be discussed in detail
below to showcase the general development of scholarly understanding of CSR.
At the very beginning, Bowen (1953) argued in the book Social Responsibilities of the
Businessman that the responsibilities businessmen should take are the obligations “to pursue
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those policies, to make those decisions, or to follow those lines of action which are desirable in
terms of the objectives and values of our society” (p. xi). Bowen’s book initiated a modern,
serious discussion of CSR, and stimulated the emergence of relevant literature (A. B. Carroll,
1999). While Bowen’s definition pointed out the parallel between the objectives of CSR and
those of the whole society, it failed to specify what kinds of responsibilities business should
undertake. Davis (1960) contributed to this discussion years later by using the method of
exclusion to clarify what CSR is not. Davis contended that the social responsibilities referred to
“businessmen’s decisions and actions taken for reasons at least partially beyond the firm’s direct
economic or technical interest” (p. 70). Drawn on this definition, McGuire (1963) further
expanded the “economic or technical interest” identified by Davis (1960, p. 70) to “economic
and legal obligations” (McGuire, 1963, p. 144).
These scholars tried to justify the importance of institutional attentiveness to ethical
responsibilities in decision making from a perspective of compensation and reciprocation. As
Davis (1967) wrote, “The substance of social responsibility arises from concern for the ethical
consequences of one’s acts as they might affect the interests of others” (p. 46). These arguments
still didn’t clearly identify ethical and philanthropic responsibilities (A. B. Carroll, 1999). Also,
they didn’t sort out the relationship between different kinds of corporate responsibilities, and
somehow undermined the importance of economic and legal responsibilities.
To categorize responsibilities and suggest their interrelationship, the Committee for
Economic Development (1971), composed of business people and educators (A. B. Carroll,
1999), put forward a three-circle CSR model. According to this model, corporations should be
engaged with three types of responsibilities, symbolized as inner circle, intermediate circle, and
outer circle. The inner circle stands for the basic economic responsibilities whereby corporations
8
make products, create jobs, and achieve economic growth; the intermediate circle requests
corporations to appreciate and promote social values along with their daily operation, such as
employee relations maintenance, environmental stewardship, and fair treatment of customers;
and the outer circle refers to emerging and amorphous responsibilities corporations should
assume to improve the social environment (Committee for Economic Development, 1971). It is
noteworthy that this model was suggested in late 1960s and early 1970s when several business-
related and gender-related social movements took place and got well-organized in US, which
prompted corporations to start undertaking quasi-philanthropic responsibilities, for example
LGBTQ advocacy, as illustrated in the outer circle (Alwood, 2015).
Built on previous scholarship, Carroll (1979) offered a concise definition which
combined four responsibilities that were discussed separately before. Carroll argued that, “The
social responsibility of business encompasses the economic, legal, ethical, and discretionary
expectations that society has of organizations at a given point in time” (p. 500). Carroll later used
“voluntary” and “philanthropic” to elaborate the meaning of “discretionary” in a more practical
way (e.g., A. B. Carroll, 1983; 1991). Carroll’s definition, by including social expectation of
corporations’ economic prosperity, suggested that profitability and responsibility were
compatible with each other. Carroll (1991) furthered this point by depicting a pyramid of CSR in
which economic responsibility, as the base of the pyramid, undergirds the upper responsibilities
in a bottom-up sequence of legal, ethical, and discretionary. Aupperle, Carroll, and Hatfield’s
(1985) work confirmed this sequence, and emphasized the indispensability of profitability in
real-world CSR practice. This argument offers a theoretical framework for a large amount of
recent scholarship exploring CSR issues in economically affluent corporations, for instance the
Fortune 500 and Fortune Global 500 companies (e.g., Karaibrahimoglu, 2010; S. Kim & Rader,
9
2010; Muller & Whiteman, 2009; Smith & Alexander, 2013). These top-ranked corporations are
usually more active in publicizing how they assume social responsibilities through different
forms of communication, such as annual reports (e.g., Sweeney & Coughlan, 2008), websites
(e.g., Wanderley, Lucian, Farache, & de Sousa Filho, 2008), and social media (e.g., K. Lee, Oh,
& Kim, 2013).
This research drew on the arguments listed above, and also used data collected from US
Fortune 500 and Fortune Global 500 companies, since high-revenue companies with full
accomplishment of basic economic responsibilities, arguably have more incentive and resources
to fulfill the high-end responsibilities, including the supposedly philanthropic LGBTQ advocacy.
Among the three common forms of CSR communication, annual reporting was chosen for this
research. Hunter and Bansal (2006) argue that website reporting is superior to annual reporting
because annual reporting is less timely. Also, website reporting and social media reporting allow
corporations to reduce the cost of CSR communication (Wanderley et al., 2008). However, when
conducting a research study which requires data from numerous corporations, the less timely
communication form actually offers a more reliable data source. First, website reporting and
social media reporting, daily updated by corporations’ communication staff, lack stability and
credibility, which hampers unbiased data collection. Second, website reporting and social media
reporting are relatively scattered without proper organizing, which makes it impossible to
comprehensively present corporations’ CSR efforts during a certain time. Third, at the current
stage, considerably more companies prefer annual reporting to website and social media
reporting for their CSR reporting. Annual CSR reporting, on the other hand, is well organized
and widely adopted. It follows the rigorous custom of public companies’ compulsory annual
financial reports (Sweeney & Coughlan, 2008), has a specific time stamp, and holds high
10
credibility with executives’ approval. The PDF publications are also easier for navigation, search,
and data collection.
Apart from Carroll’s (A. B. Carroll, 1979; 1983; 1991) definition of CSR which classifies
social responsibilities into four categories, there are three other CSR-based alternative themes
relevant to this research: corporate citizenship (Crane & Matten, 2007; Davenport, 2000;
Maignan, Ferrell, & Hult, 1999; Matten & Crane, 2005), social issue management (Wood, 1991),
and stakeholder management theory (Clarkson, 1991; 1995; Donaldson & Preston, 1995;
Freeman, 1984).
An extensive review of all the relevant public relations theories listed above would be
excessive, but a brief introduction of stakeholder theory is followed below, since the concept of
stakeholders will be extensively used in this research.
Stakeholder management theories. The concept of stakeholders, first proposed in
Freeman’s (1984) book Strategic Management: A Stakeholder Approach in 1984, has now been
widely used in public relations research and practice. Freeman defined stakeholder as “any group
or individual who can affect or is affected by the achievement of the firm’s objectives” (p. 46).
Thus, stakeholders of corporations may include employees, customers, governments, activists,
suppliers, owners, and so on. If we see Carrol’s (A. B. Carroll, 1979; 1983; 1991) efforts as
categorizing business practice according to different types of responsibilities, Freeman’s (1984)
concept of stakeholders takes a different perspective by categorizing business practice according
to different types of people involved.
Clarkson (1995) further identified two different stakeholder sub-groups: primary and
secondary. Primary stakeholder groups are ones who are essential for corporations’ survival,
while secondary stakeholder groups refer to the inessential ones. Clarkson (1995) claims that
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primary stakeholders are usually composed of shareholders, investors, employees, customers,
and suppliers, while the media and special interest groups are usually seen as secondary.
Scholars have noticed the merit of stakeholder theories for CSR research, and proposed
“a stakeholder approach to CSR” (Jamali, 2007). For example, Longo, Mura, and Bonoli (2005),
using Carrol’s (1979) CSR definition and Freeman’s (1984) stakeholder approach, examined
Italian SMEs’ (small and medium-sized enterprises) CSR practice from a stakeholder perspective,
and managed to identify expectations from four stakeholder groups: employees, suppliers,
customers, and community. Papasolomou-Doukakis, Krambia-Kapardis, and Katsioloudes (2005)
surveyed members of the Employers Federation in Cyprus, and found that local corporations’
CSR projects emphasized two specific stakeholder groups: employees and customers, both of
which are primary stakeholders.
As for public relations and diversity research, it will be later elaborated that extant
scholarship focuses on internal employees, mostly on the minority employees in the public
relations industry. Diversity issue concerning minority individuals from other major stakeholder
groups or from other industries were significantly neglected by public relations scholars.
CSR Research in Public Relations
In order to examine public relations scholars’ recent research on CSR, 84 articles from
Public Relations Review, Journal of Public Relations Research, and Management
Communication Quarterly were reviewed, using search keyword “CSR” and “public relations”
and setting publication time from 2000 to 2016.
In these articles, many scholars tried to link CSR with corporate business performance.
Lee and Shin (2010) explored the relationship between consumer awareness of CSR activities
and their purchase intentions. Lee and Shin (2010) classified CSR activities into nine different
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items and categorized them into three groups: corporate social contribution, corporate
environmental contribution, and corporate local community contribution. The results showed that
corporate social contribution and local community contribution could affect consumers’ purchase
intentions, while environmental efforts had no effects. Similarly, Wigley (2008) conducted an
experimental research to assess the impact of knowledge of a company’s CSR efforts on
customers’ attitudes and purchase intentions. It turned out that subjects exposed to a news article
about a company’s CSR activities reported more positive attitudes toward the company, and
reported stronger intentions to purchase the company’s products, compared with those exposed
to a dummy message. Other scholars (e.g., David, Kline, & Dai, 2005) conducted similar
research, and most studies find that CSR activities can make positive effects on consumers’
purchase intentions. Research of this kind emerged a lot recently, which saw CSR as a way for
corporations to ultimately generate more profits, or in other words, to assume their economic
responsibilities. Relatively less literature explored the ethical and philanthropic implications of
CSR.
Some scholars explored the role of CSR activities in reputation construction and crisis
communication. Kim, Kim, and Cameron (2009) found that responses emphasizing corporate
ability (CA) may be more effective to reduce consumers’ perceptions of organizational
responsibility than responses emphasizing CSR. Steltenpool and Verhoeven (2012) found that
explicit CSR message could make diametrically opposed effects on corporate reputation,
depending on whether the corporation was socially stigmatized.
Communication scholars tend to base their research projects on a single country setting.
Plessis and Grobler (2014) researched three retails stores in South Africa, and found limited
categories in their CSR activities, mainly cause promotion and cause-related marketing. Ozdora-
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Aksak (2015) explored how public relations and CSR practices helped four Turkish
telecommunications companies construct organizational identity. After a thematic content
analysis of the companies’ corporate websites and social media accounts, Ozdora-Aksak found
that these companies “try to create value and construct a legitimate identity by emphasizing
community benefits and their superiority vis-à-vis their competitors” (p. 365). These research
projects showcased the various CSR activities in different countries, but few scholars took a
cross-national perspective and compared these activities with each other.
Communication scholars also tend to base their research projects on a single industry
setting. For example, O’Connor and Gronewold (2013) analyzed 21 environmental sustainability
reports published by Fortune Global 500 petroleum companies, in order to examine the usage of
competitive advantage language and institutional language. The results showed that competitive
advantage language was used to describe a corporation’s quality, scope, and innovation as
superior to other companies, while institutional language was used to “describe governmental
regulations and laws, industry standards for CSR reporting and expenditures, and type of CSR
initiatives and partnerships” (p. 210). Research projects based on a single industry setting still
lack a comparative perspective, and fail to demonstrate the differences among countries and
industries.
As shown above, CSR research in public relations neglects some dimensions of CSR, if
compared with the CSR definition proposed by Carroll (A. B. Carroll, 1979; 1983; 1991). More
research projects focused on the economic and legal responsibilities, whereby corporations
improve reputation, solicit customers, obey laws, and generate more profits. Relatively less
projects explored the ethical and philanthropic responsibilities. For example, the diversity issue,
which has been discussed in many corporations’ CSR reports for years, is underemphasized in
14
CSR research. LGBT issue, a dimension of the diversity issue, receives even less attention from
the CSR scholarship. We still know little about how companies, for example those economically
affluent companies, are addressing LGBTQ-related concerns brought up by publics through their
CSR causes.
In addition, most CSR research was conducted in a single country/industry setting, and
very few did comparative research. To understand how LGBTQ CSR practices are implemented
differently across the continental and industrial boundaries, I ask the following research
questions:
RQ1: What kinds of topics emerge from the global LGBTQ CSR discourse constructed
by Fortune Global 500 companies?
RQ2: How do Fortune Global 500 companies in different continents talk about their
efforts for LGBTQ community in their CSR reports?
RQ3: How do Fortune Global 500 companies in different industries talk about their
efforts for LGBTQ community in their CSR reports?
Diversity Research in Public Relations
To present relevant scholarship, I also reviewed public relations scholars’ recent research
about LGBTQ communities. However, very limited research efforts have been made to examine
LGBTQ issue, this specific diversity issue, from a public relations perspective. Most public
relations scholarship focused on the gender and race issues (Hon & Brunner, 2000). Therefore,
some public relations literature about general diversity issues are also included in the following
review.
Sha and Ford (2007) argued that public relations diversity scholarship should include
three areas: minority public relations practitioners; minorities as the audiences of public relations
15
activities; and public relations’ role in organizational diversity management. However, a review
of articles obtained from EBSCO Communication Database with search keywords
LGBT/diversity and public relations shows that a large portion of studies were conducted in the
first and second areas. Most articles are about LGBT/diversity and the public relations industry.
For example, Tindall and Waters (2012) examined the first area by using in-depth interviews and
two focus groups to understand gay public relations practitioners’ concerns. They concluded that
public relations industry should raise awareness of the gay community, reduce stereotypes, and
adopt diversity-friendly policies. In Hon and Brunner’s (2000) article titled Diversity Issues and
Public Relations, they claimed that as audiences became more diverse and more international,
public relations departments and agencies should correspondingly recruit diverse workforce to
effectively communicate with these audiences. Hon and Brunner’s (2000) research thus falls into
Sha and Ford’s (2007) second research area. Another example of the second research area is
Toledano and Riches’s (2014) recent article about a healthcare public relations campaign co-held
by corporations and non-profit organizations. They surveyed LGBTQ participants of the
campaign, and found that participant with a longer time of engagement had a better
understanding of the event theme, and that participants tended to trust messages from non-profit
organizations, despite the brand alliance between corporations and non-profit organizations.
Another example is the recently published book Coming Out of the Closet: Exploring LGBT
Issues in Strategic Communication with Theory and Research (Tindall, 2013). The book was
composed of three parts: understanding LGBT strategic communication practitioner,
understanding industry approaches toward the LGBT community, and understanding LGBT-
targeted campaigns. They respectively investigated LGBT public relations practitioners, the
image of the LGBT community shaped by the public relations industry, and LGBT-targeted
16
campaigns carried out by public relations agencies. The third area proposed by Sha and Ford
(2007) was thus disregarded by the book.
It can be seen that current public relations scholarship, by focusing on minority
practitioners (for more examples, see Grunig, 1992; Weick, 1969) or evaluating the effectiveness
of public relations campaigns on minorities (for more examples, see Mundy, 2013; Oakenfull,
2013; Rodriguez, 2016), is still too narrow to present all the possibilities through which public
relations theories can be used to understand diversity issue and social advocacy.
Put in another way, public relations scholars should recognize that “LGBTQ community
related to public relations agencies and activities” is not the only research topic that deserves to
be examined about LGBTQ and public relations. “Public relations as a diversity management
approach,” for example, is much less visited. More specifically, how other industries are
managing their public relations with LGBTQ stakeholders desperately needs academic research.
Some scholars have noticed the deficiency and started researching public relations as a
tool to manage minority relations in other industries. However, they solely examined diversity
issues concerning internal stakeholders (e.g., Colgan & McKearney, 2012; Hon & Brunner, 2000;
Simorangkir, 2011), especially the employees and leadership within corporations. Diversity
concerns brought up by marginalized stakeholders, such as suppliers, NGOs, and governments,
are less covered. CSR, as an approach to managing public relations with minority stakeholders,
was rarely examined. This study stands in the intersection of corporate social responsibility and
LGBTQ advocacy, and presents a preliminary look at how public relations theory can be applied
to research diversity relationship management.
LGBTQ Activism
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Global LGBTQ activism. The Scientific-Humanitarian Committee, a Berlin-based
organization founded on 15 May, 1897, was the first social movement to advance gay rights
(Adam, 1995). However, most lesbian and gay rights activists cite June 27, 1969, as the
beginning of the modern gay liberation movement (Cain, 1993, p. 1580). On that day, New York
police raided a popular gay bar named Stonewall Inn, burned out the bar, but also provoked
collective resistance from the LGBTQ communities (Adam, 1995). Since then, more people
came out of the closet and became more open about their sexual orientation in everyday life and
in workplace (Elliott, 1993).
Over the past few decades, though LGBTQ activists have had major wins, the pace of
change has been somewhat slow, especially when it comes to public policies (Githens, 2009). As
of May 2015, same-sex sexual acts were still illegal in 75 nations in the world, which represented
39% of the member states of the United Nations (A. Carroll & Itaborahy, 2015). It is also
noticeable that the development of LGBT activism varies significantly across countries and
continents. Some North American and European countries, such as Canada, France, and Norway,
have legalized same-sex marriage, while Mauritania, Sudan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen still
execute individuals who have same-sex sexual behavior (as of May 2015, A. Carroll & Itaborahy,
2015). As for the social environment and public opinion, North America and Europe are
friendlier towards LGBT community and more protective of LGBTQ individuals than other parts
of the world. The following two hypotheses are thus derived:
H1: Companies based in North America and Europe are more likely to cover LGBTQ
issues in their CSR reports than those based in Asia.
H2: Companies based in North America and Europe cover a wider range of LGBTQ
topics in their CSR reports than those based in Asia.
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As for LGBTQ advocacy in workplace, only 62 nations prohibited discrimination in
employment based on sexual orientation, which merely represented 33% of the member states of
the United Nations (as of May 2015, A. Carroll & Itaborahy, 2015). In addition, the amount of
attention paid to diversity issues varies in different industries. For example, companies in the
services sector, including banks, consumer goods, and retails, are more likely to employ female
directors than companies in other industries (Harrigan, 1981). Recently, Human Rights
Campaign Foundation (“Fortune 500,” 2015) rated 851 American companies on LGBTQ
equality. Among 407 companies which achieved full marks, more than two-thirds were from the
services industry, and less than one-seventh were from the traditional industry. Two hypotheses
are thus suggested here:
H3: Companies in the services sector are more likely to cover LGBT issues in their CSR
reports than those in the high-tech and traditional sectors.
H4: Companies in the services sector cover a wider range of LGBT topics in their CSR
reports than those in the high-tech and traditional sectors.
LGBTQ activism in the United States. It is fair to argue that the last 50 years have seen
a huge change of public opinion about LGBTQ issues. For example, Yang (1997) analyzed
published and unpublished survey archives, separated survey questions into 12 categories, and
found that a significant increase of public approval of LGBTQ civil rights protection had
occurred since 1990s. In the United States, one of the landmark legal changes, which took place
recently, was the legalization of same-sex marriage on June 26, 2015. However, it is critical to
understand that LGBTQ advocacy doesn’t stop at marriage equality. US LGBTQ individuals still
remain unprotected in many aspects of their daily lives (“Fortune 500,” 2015). For example,
LGBTQ individuals still experience discrimination and harassment at work (Conley, Colgan, &
19
Creegan, 2007; Giuffre, Dellinger, & Williams, 2008), and corporations in some states still have
the capacity to legally fire employees simply due to their sexual orientation and gender identity
(“Fortune 500,” 2015).
To counter the systematic discrimination and inequality, and coordinate their advocacy
efforts, LGBTQ individuals and allies formed numerous non-profit organizations in the past
decades, the most influential one being the Human Rights Campaign Foundation (HRC). HRC,
founded in 1980, is the largest national lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer civil rights
organization in the United States. HRC has been publishing a yearly report Corporate Equality
Index (CEI) since 2002, which rates American workplaces on their LGBTQ equality (“Fortune
500,” 2015). CEI is currently one of the few reports published by non-profit organizations which
regularly monitor and examine LGBTQ causes of America’s largest employers. Labeled as the
national benchmarking tool on corporate LGBTQ policies and practice, the CEI report offers a
paradigm for corporate LGBTQ advocacy. Due to CEI reports’ and HRC’s credibility, this
research uses the benchmark criteria set by the 2016 CEI report to represent LGBTQ NGOs’
expectation of corporate LGBTQ advocacy.
It should be noted that although many large corporations have been increasingly adopting
LGBTQ-friendly policies, sometimes even more quickly than governments, there has been some
constant criticism of corporate LGBTQ engagement. For example, some argue that most
companies do not adopt these LGBTQ-friendly policies for purely altruistic reasons (Githens,
2009). In other words, by adopting LGBTQ-friendly policies and engaging in LGBTQ activities,
corporations may merely want to capture a large share of the lucrative LGBT consumer market
(Githens, 2009). Some CSR literature (David et al., 2005; Dodd & Supa, 2015; K.-H. Lee & Shin,
2010; Oakenfull, 2013; Wigley, 2008), measuring the effect of corporations being socially
20
responsible on customers’ purchase intention, validated this suspicion. This kind of practice, to
achieve non-LGBTQ-related benefits by demonstrating a LGBTQ-friendly image, has emerged
in corporate marketing and governmental public relations campaigns, and is named
“pinkwashing” by LGBTQ scholars (Puar, 2013; Ritchie, 2014). For example, Keystone Pipeline,
an oil pipeline system in Canada and the United States, solicited public support for its business
by comparing Canada’s record on LGBTQ rights with other nations (Michaelson, 2014). In the
political sphere, Israel has been using “pinkwashing” strategies to “counter the negative
stereotypes that many liberal Americans and Europeans have of Israel” (Lazaroff, 2006; Spade,
2013).
Following this logic, I thus suspect if the corporate LGBTQ values, which could be used
in a “pinkwashed” way, are significantly different from LGBTQ NGOs’ values, which are
supposedly more altruistic. Due to the same suspicion, I also wonder if corporations really set up
practical activities to implement their LGBTQ advocacy, which may bring some economic cost.
In other words, I wonder if the corporate LGBTQ advocacy featured in their CSR reports is
nothing more than empty promises whereby corporations trumpet their support for LGBTQ
communities but don’t have any actual program about it.
To compare the difference between CSR values and NGO values, it is necessary to first
interpret the paradigm of corporate LGBTQ advocacy set up by HRC’s CEI report:
RQ4: How does the HRC CEI report construct the US corporate LGBTQ advocacy
paradigm?
Then, to compare the CSR efforts with the NGO paradigm, I ask:
RQ5: How do US Fortune 500 companies’ LGBTQ CSR topics fit into the corporate
LGBTQ advocacy paradigm established by the HRC CEI report?
21
RQ6: How are practical activities suggested by the HRC CEI report implemented in US
Fortune 500 companies’ CSR causes?
Methodologically, in the US section of this research, I first identified the parent themes,
sub-themes, and activities suggested by the 2016 HRC CEI reports to construct the LGBTQ
advocacy paradigm, then ran topic modeling on US Fortune 500 companies’ CSR reports to
uncover the US LGBTQ CSR topics which were later compared with the themes of the corporate
LGBTQ advocacy paradigm, and lastly did content analysis to see what practical activities
suggested by the paradigm were actually implemented by US Fortune 500 companies.
22
Methods
Data Collection
CSR reports. For global LGBTQ CSR discourse comparison, I examined annual CSR
reports published by 2015 Fortune Global 500 companies. I selected the Fortune Global 500
companies for three reasons. First, companies on the listing are based in different countries,
which matches the requirement of my first cross-national study. Second, Fortune Global 500
companies have larger revenues, more stakeholders, and higher visibility in their countries than
companies with smaller volumes. Therefore, they arguably receive higher CSR expectations
from the public, contribute more corporate resources to CSR causes, and report their CSR efforts
more actively. Using companies with higher activeness in CSR reporting can facilitate data
collection in this study. Third, with a larger number of stakeholders, a Fortune Global 500
company may have more LGBT stakeholders proportionally. The higher population and
visibility can arguably make the company pay more attention to the LGBT community.
Consequently, Fortune Global 500 companies are more likely to articulate their LGBT efforts in
their annual CSR reports. Using companies with higher likelihoods of LGBT CSR reporting can
facilitate data analysis in this study. For the same reasons, annual CSR reports published by 2016
US Fortune 500 companies were collected to answer the research questions about LGBTQ CSR
efforts in the United States.
Fortune companies vastly vary in their annual CSR reporting manners. Most companies
annually publish downloadable PDFs, and use names such as Corporate Social Responsibility
Report, Sustainability Report, Citizenship Review, Annual Review and other variations. Some
companies publish online PDFs that can’t be downloaded. Few companies publish their annual
CSR reports online in HTML format without official PDF publications. There are also a certain
23
number of companies that do not publish official reports, or only briefly reveal their CSR efforts
in annual reports.
In order to avoid bias, this research set up a strict screening for data collection. Only
downloadable PDF reports and online PDF reports with search function integrated were collected
as data. Annual reports and integrated reports which mostly focus on corporations’ financial
achievements were excluded. Single-topic reports, such as supplier reports, environmental
sustainability reports, and diversity and inclusion reports, were also excluded. Website (HTML)
reports were excluded as well due to the lack of clear publication dates. CSR highlight reports
were allowed when no full CSR reports were available. Fortune Global 500 company data were
collected between February 23, 2016, and February 25, 2016. US Fortune 500 company data
were collected between August 26, 2016, and September 4, 2016.
Keywords were used to search for relevant paragraphs about LGBTQ advocacy in CSR
reports: LGBT, gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, homosexual, sex, orientation, preference,
gender, and identity. Due to the existence of hyphens, LGB, gay, les, bis, trans, homo, sex, orie,
pref, gend, and iden were used for PDF search.
Paragraphs having any of these words were extracted from the PDFs along with their
contexts, most of which were composed of the paragraphs under the same subheading. These
contexts were copied into a csv table of three columns named “ranking,” “company name,” and
“context.” Two csv files, one for Fortune Global 500 companies and one for US Fortune 500
companies, were used for big data analysis.
Global data categorization. Of the 500 Fortune Global companies, 361 have CSR
reports which meet the screening conditions. Among them, 158 companies mentioned LGBT
issues in their CSR reports. These companies were first categorized according to the continent
24
each company belonged to. Continents include Asia, North America, South America, Europe,
and Oceania. No company on the 2015 Fortune Global 500 listing is based in Africa. Since only
one South American company and seven Oceanian companies mentioned LGBT issues in their
CSR reports, I didn’t separately analyze South America and Oceania in this study, due to sample
size considerations.
The Fortune Global 500 companies were also categorized by industries. Fortune
classified its top 500 companies into 63 different industries, which was excessive for this
research. I thus adopted the taxonomy introduced by Zéghal and Maaloul (2010) who organized
Industry Classification Benchmark (ICB) sectors into three groups: high-tech industries,
traditional industries, and services industries. ICB
1
is used by stock exchanges representing over
65% of the world’s market capitalization, including NYSE, NASDAQ, and London Stock
Exchange. ICB identified 41 sectors. Zéghal and Maalouf (2010) organized 39 of the 41 sectors
into the three groups. I updated their taxonomy by adding the two left-over ICB sectors into the
classification (see Table 1), and applied it to the Fortune Global 500 companies. Most names of
the 63 industries in the Fortune Global 500 listing can be exactly matched with the names of ICB
sectors. Companies whose industries cannot be found in ICB sectors were examined one by one
and categorized into the three groups. Six trading companies—Samsung C&T and five Japanese
sogo shosha—were omitted because of their extremely miscellaneous business lines. The sheet
of every company’s classification can be obtained from the author upon request.
The statistics of the global data categorization, used to test the first and third hypotheses,
is appended as Table 2.

1
See http://www.icbenchmark.com
25
NGO reports. The newest HRC CEI report is named “Human Rights Campaign
Foundation’s 2016 Corporate Equality Index,” which was published on December 8, 2015. The
report’s criteria part was read through to identify the parent themes, sub-themes, and practical
activities of the corporate LGBTQ advocacy paradigm which was appended as Table 13.
Data Analysis
Topic modeling and visualization. Topic modeling and visualization were used to
extract topical results from the two data sets. For Fortune Global 500 companies, an overall
modeling, three continental modelings, and three industrial modelings were conducted. For US
Fortune 500 companies, an overall modeling was conducted.
The data collected from the US Fortune 500 dataset includes 308 CSR reports which met
our screening standard. Of the 308 reports, 180 reports have LGBTQ-related words. The US
Fortune 500 csv file of 180 contexts, and the Fortune Global 500 csv file of 158 contexts, were
analyzed in R 3.3.2 (R Core Team, 2016) and R Studio 1.0.136 (RStudio Team, 2016) using
several topic modeling and text mining packages: lda (Chang, 2015), LDAvis (Sievert & Shirley,
2015), tm (Meyer, Hornik, & Feinerer, 2008), topicmodels (Grün & Hornik, 2011), SnowballC
(Bouchet-Valat, 2014), servr (Xie, 2016), and textreg (Miratrix, 2015). A brief introduction to
the analysis process follows.
Contexts were imported and saved into a character vector, referred as vector A. Vector A
was first converted to lowercase. Package tm’s (Meyer et al., 2008) stopwords function was used
to remove meaningless words such as “are,” “we,” “will,” and etc. Fortune 500 companies’
names and “human rights campaign,” which may affect the modeling validity, were added to the
custom stopwords list. Apostrophes, punctuations, digits, and excessive whitespace were
removed afterwards.
26
After being pre-processed, vector A was converted to a corpus, referred as corpus A, for
stemming. Package tm’s (Meyer et al., 2008) stemDocument function was used for stemming.
Stemming is the process of “erasing word suffixes to retrieve radicals” (p. 24). For example,
“alliance,” “ally,” “allies,” and “allied” will be stemmed to a single radical “alli.”
Corpus A was then converted back to a character vector, referred as vector B, to generate
a term table and fit into the LDA format. Number of iterations (iter) was set as high as 4000 to
generate more accurate and clustered topic results, despite the consequent longer processing time.
Number of initial iterations to ignore (burnin) was set as 400 to eliminate the inaccurate results
generated at the beginning of topic modeling. The scalar value of the Dirichlet hyperparameter
for topic proportions (alpha) and the scalar value of the Dirichlet hyperparamater for topic
multinomials (eta) were both set as 0.1. A starting seed was set randomly. Grün and Hornik’s
(2011) article and lda package’s reference manual (Chang, 2015) introduced these parameters to
more details.
The LDAvis package (Sievert & Shirley, 2015) was used to visualize the topic modeling
results, and demonstrate the linguistic relations among topics. The size of each topic circle stands
for its volume. For example, when the number of topics is set as 15, the number 1 will be
assigned to the most linguistically salient topic and the number 15 will be assigned to the least
one. The overlap between circles means that the topics share several same words, and thus have a
certain degree of linguistic similarity. The R code used to extract global LGBTQ CSR discourse
is appended as Appendix 1.
Since corporations’ LGBTQ advocacy discourses appeared to be extremely homogenous,
the number of topics for each data set was set from 15 to 3. Topic modeling result for each
certain number of topics was exported as a csv file with 20 most related words listed under each
27
topic. Thirteen csv files were thus obtained for each data set, and read through from the 15-topic
sheet to the 3-topic sheet.
Analysis of the topic modeling results requires scholars to find the most appropriate sheet
which includes all interpretable topics mentioned by the sheets of larger numbers of topics. To
showcase how topic modeling interpretation is done, the 15-topic sheet and its visualization of
the US Fortune 500 data set, was appended as Table 12 and Figure 9. It can be seen that topic 9,
11, 12, 13, 14, and 15 are linguistically similar to each other, and that estimated 10 topics should
be manifest in the US LGBTQ CSR discourse. After repeatedly reading through all topic
modeling results, I affirmed that there were 10 linguistically independent and manifest topics. I
also found that the 11-topic sheet represented all manifest topics with only one extra topic being
a sub-topic of the “health benefit” topic. The 11-topic sheet and its visualization, appended as
Table 11 and Figure 8, were thus used for my results.
After identifying the best sheet and visualization for a certain data set, the author has to
interpret the topics by tracing back to the original text of each topic and supplementing the most
related words with respective contexts. For example, a topic with words such as “employee,”
“healthcare,” “LGBT,” and “benefit,” should be further interpreted as “LGBT employees are
entitled to the same health benefits as their straight colleagues.” To help readers differentiate
original topic modeling words from further interpretation, I will mark original topic modeling
words with a bold font in the results section.
Content analysis. To examine if US Fortune 500 companies implemented practical
activities suggested by HRC’s 2016 CEI report, this research further conducted a content
analysis on the 180 contexts collected from the US Fortune 500 data set. Each LGBTQ CSR
context was seen as a content unit. Nineteen variables were created (see Coding Instructions in
28
Appendix 2), corresponding to the 19 activities identified in HRC’s 2016 CEI report. All 180
contexts were coded without sampling. DiscoverText was used for coding.
Two coders were first trained by using some sample text. After training, 36 contexts (20%
of the 180 contexts) were selected for reliability testing using random sampling. The intercoder
reliability of the testing showed that the average Cohen’s Kappa was 0.78, and the average
Krippendorff’s Alpha was 0.80. Due to the difficulty of the coding, the reliability is considered
substantial and modest (Hayes & Krippendorff, 2007; Landis & Koch, 1977). After reliability
testing, one coder finished coding all 180 contexts.
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Results
Global CSR Topics
The topic modeling result for Fortune Global 500 companies is shown in Table 3 with its
visualization in Figure 1. Main keywords of each topic are highlighted in Table 3.
Global topics have 7 prominent themes which mainly involve internal LGBTQ
stakeholders—employees and suppliers. Topic 1, 2, 3, 5, and 6 indicate that Fortune Global 500
companies have developed five different dimensions to protect their LGBTQ employees. Topic 4
shows that the diversity issue within suppliers is a concern for Fortune Global 500 companies.
Topic 7, which is the least manifest topic, shows that some companies also try to engage
themselves with external LGBTQ communities. The result indicates that Fortune Global 500
companies’ LGBTQ CSR efforts are extremely monotonous, and that promoting LGBTQ
activism is closely related with companies’ daily internal operation.
Seven topics and their respective examples are listed as follows.
• Topic 1: Create diverse/inclusive work culture for employees.
For example, “promoting an inclusive culture” is at the core of National Australia
Bank’s (ranked 266) diversity and inclusion strategy. Similarly, Swiss Re’s (ranked
313) CSR report writes, “An inclusive corporate culture is essential for a diverse
workforce, given the diversity of thought, opinion and experience this helps to create.”
• Topic 2: Non-discrimination policy on sexual orientation, age, nationality, gender,
religion, race, and any other status.
For example, Glencore’s (ranked 10) CSR report writes, “We prohibit discrimination
on the basis of race, nationality, religion, gender, age, sexual orientation, disability,
ancestry, social origin, political or other opinion, or any other bias.” Most examined
30
Fortune Global 500 companies mentioned prohibition of discrimination in their CSR
reports.
• Topic 3: Corporate resource networks for LGBT members.
For example, BP (ranked 6) encourages employees to set up networks “around a
range of issues including gender, sexual orientation, and ethnicity.” Most examined
companies use Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) to refer to networks of this kind.
• Topic 4: Develop supplier diversity through business programs.
For example, Toshiba (ranked 157) demands that its suppliers “take actions against
basic human rights violations.” Exxon Mobil ensures “a diverse supply chain outside
the United States,” and added businesses owned by LGBTQ community into its
supplier diversity database in 2014.
• Topic 5: Offer equal health benefits/medical care for associates and their partners.
For example, “nearly 1.2 million associates and family members, including same-sex
and opposite-sex domestic partners,” are covered by Walmart’s (ranked 1) health care
plans. DirecTV (ranked 360) also provides parity in all benefits and offers health
insurance benefits to both domestic partners and same-sex spouses.
• Topic 6: Promote individual human rights in companies.
For example, Schlumberger (ranked 215) encourages “work that augments the
contributions that businesses can make to preserve and respect human dignity.”
Nissan Motor (ranked 59) “ensures employee rights by requiring that all employees
respect the human rights of others.”
• Topic 7: Support/sponsor LGBT projects/event in workplace.
31
For example, Morgan Stanley (ranked 306) invited employees to attend “events in
recognition of Pride Month, a celebration of the achievements, history, culture and
contributions of the LGBTQ community.”
Global continental CSR topics. Of the 361 examined companies with independent full-
length CSR reports, 104 are based in North America, 118 are based in Europe, 126 are based in
Asia, 8 are based in Oceania, and 5 are based in South America. Among them, 158 companies
mention LGBTQ issues in their reports. Sixty-nine companies are based in North America, 58
are based in Europe, 23 are based in Asia, 7 are based in Oceania, and 1 is based in South
America.
Table 2 shows how many companies in a certain continent discuss LGBTQ issues in their
CSR reports. The result supports the first hypothesis. Companies based in North America and
Europe are much more likely to articulate their LGBTQ efforts in their CSR reports than
companies based in Asia. For example, 43 Chinese companies were examined in this research,
but only two companies—Lenovo Group, and China Everbright Group—discussed LGBTQ
issues in their CSR reports. The result also resonates with the general level of acceptance of
same-sex marriage in these continents. Interesting is the fact that although no Australian state has
legalized same-sex marriage, seven of the eight Oceanian Fortune Global 500 companies (all
based in Australia) reported LGBTQ advocacy activities in their CSR reports.
Table 4 shows the topic modeling result of North American Fortune Global 500
companies, with main keywords highlighted and its visualization appended as Figure 2. Seven
prominent continental topics emerge from North American LGBT CSR discourse, which can be
seen as covering all topics in the global discourse. North American topics are as follows: 1)
Develop diverse/inclusive support groups/networks; 2) Supplier diversity programs; 3) Non-
32
discrimination policy/law on sexual orientation, gender, or any other status; 4) Score high in
Corporate Equality Index (CEI) reports; 5) Health benefits and medical care for associates and
partners; 6) Commitment to all human rights; 7) Sponsor diversity partnership programs for
students. Comparison between North American topics and global topics shows that: 1) North
American companies, mainly composed of US companies, like to cite their scores in Corporate
Equality Index reports to showcase their achievement in LGBTQ advocacy; 2) “External
LGBTQ advocacy events” in the global discourse is specified as educational partnership
programs in the North American discourse, which also shows up in the US CSR discourse
articulated later.
Table 5 and Figure 3 shows the topic modeling result of European Fortune Global 500
companies, which reflects seven prominent continental topics: 1) Manage diverse employee
networks/groups; 2) Equal employment policy with no discrimination; 3) Inclusive/diverse
support for LGBT colleagues; 4) Inclusive/diverse business culture for LGBT; 5) Compliance
with code of ethics, report/response to discriminative issues; 6) Develop supplier programs; 7)
Sign European diversity charter/projects to create organizational culture. Comparison between
European topics and global topics shows that: 1) Three topics, serving equal health benefits,
promoting general human rights, and sponsoring external advocacy events, do not exist in
European companies’ LGBTQ CSR discourse; 2) European companies tend to use collaborative
and supervisory approaches—LGBT charters and diversity charters—for their diversity affairs.
Table 6 shows the topic modeling result of Asian Fortune Global 500 companies, with
main keywords highlighted and the respective visualization appended as Figure 4. Five
prominent topics can be easily identified: 1) No employment discrimination based on sexual
orientation, religion, status, disability, and race; 2) Promote awareness of human rights issues
33
(LGBT) within workplace; 3) Respect human rights and global code of conduct; 4) Develop
diverse company culture for employees; 5) Provide training programs for new recruits.
Comparison between Asian topics and global topics shows that: 1) Several topics, namely
offering health benefits, supporting LGBT network/community/events, and developing supplier
diversity, are missing in the Asian discourse; 2) Asian companies’ narrative constructed a sub-
theme under the human rights topic, and called for more awareness of marginal human rights
issues. 3) Keyword “law” is on the top of the word list, which indicates Asian companies’
emphasis on the legal aspect of human rights issues. Therefore, the second hypothesis is
supported.
Global industrial CSR topics. Of the 355 examined companies with independent full-
length CSR reports, 85 are in high-tech sectors, 134 are in traditional sectors, and 136 are in
services sectors. Of the 157 companies whose independent full-length CSR reports discuss
LGBTQ issues, 45 are in high-tech industry sectors, 41 are in traditional industry sectors, and 71
are in services sectors. Statistics are shown in Table 2. High-tech industry and services industry
are much more likely to report their LGBTQ efforts in CSR reporting. However, the third
hypothesis is only partly supported by the results, since the high-tech industry shows a higher
commitment to reporting LGBTQ CSR progress than the services industry.
Table 7 shows the topic modeling result of high-tech Fortune Global 500 companies, with
main keywords highlighted and its visualization appended as Figure 5. The result can be
interpreted as: 1) Develop diverse/inclusive workspace with LGBT employees; 2) Stick to labor
policy and prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation or any other status; 3)
Diverse/inclusive organizational culture; 4) Promote human rights issues and relevant training; 5)
Improve supplier diversity and support small business; 6) Score high in Corporate Equality
34
Index reports. High-tech companies covered most global topics, but missed the health benefits
and external LGBTQ community engagement topics.
Table 8 shows the topic modeling result of Fortune Global 500 companies which are
classified into the services sectors. Visualization is attached as Figure 6. Main keywords are
highlighted. The topics are: 1) Diverse/inclusive workplace and supporting networks for
employees; 2) Promote supplier diversity to support minority business; 3) No discrimination on
sexual orientation or any other status; 4) Health benefits for company associates and their
partners; 5) Commitment to code of conduct for all kinds of ethics issues; 6) Support for LGBT
community, LGBT market, and LGBT customers. Services companies also covered most global
LGBT CSR topics, but missed the human rights topic.
Table 9 shows the topic modeling result of Fortune Global 500 companies in traditional
sectors, with main keywords highlighted and its visualization in Figure 7. Topics are: 1)
Diverse/inclusive workplace/culture for LGBT employees; 2) No discrimination based on sexual
orientation or any other status; 3) Equally promote women and disabled workers; 4) Launch
professional resource networks/groups for LGBT employees; 5) Sustain diversity in supplier
chain; 6) Serve domestic health benefit for American employees. It can be seen that traditional
companies’ discourse missed two major topics: human rights, and external LGBTQ community
engagement. The result also indicates that traditional companies’ LGBTQ CSR discourse highly
overlaps with their discourse on women employees and employees with disability. The health
benefit topic, with its third most related word as “American,” hints that probably only American
traditional companies provide these health benefits. Therefore, with services industry covering
the most topics, the fourth hypothesis is supported by the results.
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Table 10 was created to present a comparative global overview of corporate LGBTQ
advocacy.
NGO LGBTQ Advocacy Paradigm
The criteria in HRC’s 2016 CEI report consist of four themes: equal employment
opportunity policy, employment benefits, organizational LGBTQ competency, and public
commitment (“Fortune 500,” 2015, p. 11). Each theme includes several sub-themes which
explain the criteria in detail. Practical activities are suggested under sub-themes. The CEI 2016
report also articulates themes and sub-themes in detail in its following finding section (p. 17).
The corporate LGBTQ advocacy paradigm, shown in Table 13, derives from CEI 2016 report’s
criteria section and finding section. Four themes, 11 sub-themes, and 19 practical activity
suggestions are identified.
To ensure equal employment opportunity for LGBTQ employees, the CEI report
proposes four sub-themes to cover LGBTQ groups’ interests: protection of sexual orientation,
protection of gender identity, global extension of protection, and supplier extension of protection
(“Fortune 500,” 2015, p. 18). To achieve the full score in this section, corporations must
implement non-discrimination policies for both sexual orientation (lesbian, gay, and bisexual
groups) and gender identity (transgender groups), extend these policies to their global workforce
regardless of different cultural and operating environments (p. 20), and ensure supplier mandates
explicitly include sexual orientation and gender identity. Four practical activities are thus
extracted from its finding section: sexual orientation non-discrimination policies, gender identity
non-discrimination policies, non-discrimination policies globally, and non-discrimination
policies for suppliers.
36
CEI report also requests corporations to provide LGBTQ employees with the same
employment benefits as their straight cic-gender colleagues have, especially the healthcare
benefits. Besides, routine care, hormone therapies, and medically necessary surgeries should also
be offered to transgender employees. This research uses three sub-themes to summarize these
requirements: equivalent healthcare benefits, equivalent non-healthcare benefits, and transgender
benefits. Equivalent healthcare benefits cover health-related benefits, such as COBRA, dental,
and vision (“Fortune 500,” 2015, p. 11). Non-healthcare benefits stand for sick leave, retiree
benefits, life insurance, employee discount, and etc (p. 11). Transgender benefits are benefits not
targeted at the majority cisgender group. Coverage for sex reassignment surgeries and hormone
replacement therapies is an example of the transgender benefits.
Organizational LGBTQ competency requires corporations to promote LGBTQ advocacy
at an organizational level. Two sub-themes are identified: training, facilities, and measures, and
organizational networks. Training stands for the educational efforts organizations make to create
and maintain a climate of inclusion (“Fortune 500,” 2015, p. 26). Facilities refer to LGBTQ-
friendly amenities, such as all-gender restrooms. Measures are of two parts. First, LGBTQ
diversity performance should be included in the evaluation of leadership and employees. Second,
corporations should offer the option for employees to disclose sexual orientation and gender
identity anonymously for more comprehensive human resource records (p. 28). Practical
activities for training, resources, and measures are listed in Table 13. As for organizational
networks, CEI report suggests corporations to form employee groups for diverse populations of
their workforce (p. 29). Employee groups can also be named as employee resource groups
(ERGs), employee network, business resource groups, and affinity groups. The practical activity
for this sub-theme is thus the organizing of LGBTQ employee resource groups.
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Public commitment diverts corporate LGBTQ advocacy from internal LGBTQ
stakeholders to the external ones. External efforts are categorized into two sub-themes: LGBTQ-
specific engagement and LGBTQ-specific alienation. By engagement, corporations with full
public commitment to LGBTQ advocacy should host or participate in LGBTQ-focused events
(e.g., job affairs, diversity conferences), launch marketing programs with LGBTQ elements (e.g.,
advertising featuring LGBTQ individuals, marketing targeted at LGBTQ consumers), contribute
to external LGBTQ community philanthropically (e.g., donation to non-profit LGBTQ
organizations), promote LGBTQ diversity in suppliers, and support LGBTQ-inclusive
legislations and public policies. By alienation, corporations should “avoid philanthropic giving
to non-religious organizations that have a written policy of discrimination on the basis of sexual
orientation and gender identity” (“Fortune 500,” 2015, p. 34). This research slightly extended the
scope of alienation and used “prohibition on support and services for LGBTQ-discriminative
organizations/events” for coding.
US CSR Topics and Practice
Table 11 and Figure 8 show the 11-topic sheet and its visualization result. Main
keywords of each topic are highlighted. The interpretation and in-text examples of the 10 topics
are followed.
• Topic 1: Develop inclusive business environment and support diversity programs
for employees.
For example, Exxon Mobil (ranked 2) “supports a work environment that values
diversity and inclusion.” Fortune 500 companies have very similar wordings for this
topic, mostly using three word “inclusion/inclusive,” “diversity/diverse,” and
“environment.” Some companies use the word “culture.” For example, CH2M Hill
38
(ranked 478) gives Faye Tate, its director of global diversity, equality, and inclusion,
credit for helping create a culture of inclusion in the company.
• Topic 2: Obey laws and policies and prohibit discrimination against minority
statuses, such as gender, disability, sexual orientation, race, age, origins, veteran
and religion.
For example, Kelly Services (ranked 467) says it “respect and follow all applicable
laws and legislation related to labor.” Gilead (ranked 86) affirms that it does not
“tolerate discrimination based on race, color, gender, religion, disability, sexual
orientation, veteran status, gender identity or expression.”
• Topic 3: Develop business supplier diversity.
For example, before articulating efforts for supplier diversity, IBM (ranked 31)
claims that, “Diversity among our suppliers has been a formal priority for IBM since
1968.” Humana (ranked 52) cooperates with several supplier diversity organizations
because it believes “suppliers are extensions of ourselves.”
• Topic 4: Get top scores in Corporate Equality Index (CEI), and receive national
awards.
This topic emerges from the competitive narrative of US Fortune 500 companies’
CSR reports. Many companies boast about awards they won in the last year and
scores they got from external organizations’ evaluation. Some of them even spared a
whole page of appendixes for award reporting. For example, in its CSR report, J.C.
Penney (ranked 228) listed “numerous recent awards” it won with its “inclusion and
diversity efforts.” Also noteworthy is that nearly one-third of examined companies
mentioned Corporate Equality Index (CEI), which was used in this paper to create the
39
corporate LGBTQ advocacy paradigm. Companies without a full score also took up
this topic. CVS Health (ranked 7) says it “scored 90 out of 100” and is going to
“improve our score in 2016.”
• Topic 5: Support employee resources groups/networks.
Most US Fortune 500 companies use “Employee Business Resource Groups (EBRGs)”
and “Employee Resource Groups (ERGs)” to refer to their internal groups for
minorities. LGBTQ groups/networks are usually mentioned along with other minority
groups/networks. For example, Johnson Controls (ranked 70) offers “eight Business
Resource Groups with 32 chapters all around the world” to “connect employees with
similar backgrounds, experiences or characteristics.”
• Topic 6: Offer health benefit programs/plans for employees.
Many Fortune 500 companies have health plans for non-heterosexual cisgender
employees. For example, Merck (ranked 72) has “extended healthcare and various
insurance benefits to employees’ same-sex domestic partners and their partners’
eligible dependent children.” However, far fewer companies mentioned transgender
health benefits in their CSR reports, which will be demonstrated in the following
content analysis findings.
• Topic 7: Supreme Court protects marriage equality.
Fortune 500 companies appear to be concerned about current affairs in their CSR
narrative. Some companies articulated the changes Supreme Court’s decision had
made to their daily operation. For example, Marathon Petroleum (ranked 42) writes,
“When the US Supreme Court’s Obergefell v. Hodges ruling in 2015 made same-sex
marriage legal across the nation, the biggest change to our benefits was that same-sex
40
spouses were recognized under our retirement plan.” Some other companies
underlined their support for marriage equality prior to the ruling. Citigroup (ranked
29) said that the company signed the friend-of-the-court amicus brief, “urging the US
Supreme Court to support same-sex marriage.” This topic resonates with CEI report’s
call for corporate support for LGBTQ-inclusive legislation.
• Topic 8: Practice global code of conduct to protect human rights.
Though the stopword list includes the phrase “human rights campaign” which was
pervasively used by Fortune 500 companies, “human rights” emerges as a manifest
topic with the term “global.” Many companies situated their LGBTQ advocacy in
their discussion about global human rights protection. For example, after supporting
marriage equality legislation in its home state of Washington, Microsoft (ranked 25)
continues to “respect for human rights,” “commit to empowering individuals around
the world,” and support marriage equality when this issue arises in global
communities.
• Topic 9: Leverage media impact to show LGBTQ pride (GLAAD).
Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance (ranked 76) demonstrated its support following
the Supreme Court’s same-sex marriage ruling through the launch of a social media
campaign, “Vow to Protect.” Some companies stressed social media impact in their
reports. For example, Visa (ranked 204) shared its celebration of marriage equality
online, and got one of its most shared, most liked social media posts to date. Estee
Lauder (ranked 261) supported LGBTQA Pride Month in the US, which resulted in
“seven brands leveraging social media to promote LGBTQA inclusion.” It should be
noted that this topic partially overlaps with topic 4, since some companies, for
41
example Time Warner (ranked 99) and CBS (ranked 203), cited media awards they
got in the last year, especially the GLAAD Media Award.
• Topic 10: Organize LGBTQ campaigns in schools for students and youth.
Fortune 500 companies also engaged in educational programs to promote their
diversity causes. For example, Unum Group (ranked 265) “funded $35,000 in
scholarships for high school seniors who demonstrate a commitment to diversity and
inspire others to value differences.” Bank of America (ranked 26), Intel (ranked 51),
NRG Energy (ranked 193), Biogen (ranked 263), Interpublic Group (ranked 355), and
many other companies also have minority campaigns tailored for LGBTQ students in
high schools, colleges, and universities.
We also examined the 11th topic whose words were not directly linked to LGBTQ issues.
It turns out that “energi” comes from energy companies’ names, companies’ cooperation with
external organizations whose names contain “energy,” such as Center for Energy Workforce
Development (CEWD), and the use of variants of “energy,” such as “inclusive and energizing
environment,” and “share the knowledge capital, energy and range of talent within our diverse,
multigenerational workforce.” And the health-related terms overlap with our topic 6.
US CSR vs global CSR. US and global topic modeling results both share the foremost
six topics: diverse/inclusive work environment, non-discrimination policy, supplier diversity
programs for LGBTQ minority business, LGBTQ employee resource networks, health benefits
for LGBTQ employees, and human rights commitment.
However, by comparing the global result with the US result, it can be seen that US CSR
discourse is more detailed and localized.
42
The first example is the different ways US and Global companies introduced their
external LGBTQ engagement efforts. Fortune Global 500 companies preferred using general
terms, such as “events,” “projects,” “sponsor,” and “support,” to cover these efforts. US Fortune
500 companies, instead, offered more details about their community initiatives in the narrative.
They presented pragmatic programs and campaigns in their CSR reports. The US topic 9 and
10—LGBTQ media impact and LGBTQ educational programs—are basically two pragmatic
examples of the global topic 7—LGBTQ projects and events.
Second, US companies overall like to prove their LGBTQ advocacy achievements by
listing competitive scores and awards they received from local non-profit organizations in the
previous year. The US result shows that Human Rights Campaign (HRC) and its Corporate
Index Report (CEI) were highly recognized by US Fortune 500 companies. Their numerous
mentions of HRC and CEI scores made the topic ranked 4th, higher than other major topics.
Third, the US topic 7 about the Supreme Court ruling of marriage equality indicates that
US companies’ reports emphasized their recent efforts in national/local public affairs. The
pattern can’t be seen in the global results, since there had not been a big win in LGBTQ
advocacy on a global scale. It also hints that LGBTQ advocacy movement is still heavily
country-based at its current stage, and its advocates across the world haven’t formed an
international force and achieved anything globally influential.
US CSR vs US NGO. To compare US Fortune 500 companies’ CSR discourse with
NGO’s supposedly altruistic values, I first located LGBTQ CSR discourse topics articulated
above in the corporate LGBTQ CSR paradigm, and then annotated each practical activity with its
respective content analysis result. The result is shown in Table 14, with bold font highlighting
the LGBTQ CSR topic results and italic font highlighting the LGBTQ CSR activity results.
43
Topic modeling and content analysis results show that there are some discrepancies between
CSR and NGO values of corporate LGBTQ advocacy.
Topically, it can be seen that US Fortune 500 companies’ CSR discourse
disproportionally focuses on equal employment with the parent theme and sub-themes all salient
in the topic modeling result. Meanwhile, in employment benefits, organizational LGBTQ
competency, and public commitment sections, several topics are missing.
US Topic 1, phrased in a very general way, basically shows corporations’ resolution to
create an equal corporate environment for LGBTQ employees, which is marked as similar to the
“equal employment” parent theme. The four sub-themes are all manifest in corporation’s CSR
reports. US Topic 6, despite “health” being its most relevant word, still represents the theme of
equivalent non-healthcare benefits, because sentences about non-healthcare benefits and
healthcare benefits will both be categorized into topic 6 during topic modeling. Topic 3, 5, 7, 9,
and 10 can all be easily matched with the sub-themes of organizational networks and LGBTQ-
specific engagement. However, the sub-themes of transgender benefits, and training, facilities,
and measures are notably neglected by US Fortune 500 companies, of which the following
content analysis result gives proof.
Practically, sexual orientation non-discrimination policies and LGBTQ employee
resource groups are the two most popular CSR activities for US Fortune 500 companies’
LGBTQ advocacy according to their CSR reports. Participation in LGBTQ-focused events,
supplier diversity programs, philanthropic support for LGBTQ community, and support for
LGBTQ-inclusive legislation and public policies, all under the sub-theme of LGBTQ-specific
engagement, are also pervasive in US Fortune 500 companies’ CSR practice.
44
However, several practical activities proposed by the corporate LGBTQ advocacy
paradigm are significantly underrepresented. For example, transgender health benefit programs
are only found in 7 companies, and no single company invested in LGBTQ-friendly facilities
(e.g., all-gender restrooms) according to their CSR reports. Very few companies consider
LGBTQ diversity performance when evaluating leadership and employees. Besides, result shows
25 out of 180 companies didn’t mention any practical activity in their CSR reports. Some of
them, itemizing all the scores and awards, did not go further than topic 4, while others were
extremely verbose and nonspecific. For example, Visteon (ranked 470) claimed to value
diversity, but did not have any down-to-earth activity:
Visteon places a high value on diversity and everything it embodies. For Visteon,
diversity represents an environment of open communication where the contributions of
all employees are valued. Visteon believes that a diverse business is built on the
foundation of inclusion, respect, acceptance and learning. The attributes that make us
unique individuals–culture, ethnicity, race, gender, age, sexual orientation, gender
identity and expression, disability, nationality, education, life experience and beliefs–
allow us to provide each other with insights that may not otherwise be realized. As a
multicultural organization, Visteon embraces human differences and harnesses the power
of its employees’ varied backgrounds, cultures and experiences to create a competitive
edge.
More statistical details about the number and percentage of companies having each
practical activity implemented can be seen in Table 14.
45
Case Study: Target and North Carolina HB2 Controversy
The differences between the US CSR values and the US NGO values illustrated in the
results section indicate that US Fortune 500 companies pay relatively less attention to marginal
LGBTQ issues, such as transgender issues, compared to the generic diversity issues—sexual
orientation protection, diverse recruitment, employee support groups, and etc—which have been
regularly reported by mainstream media and advocated by major activist groups.
Moreover, the intention of the corporate LGBTQ involvement is suspicious. US Fortune
500 companies, at least according to their CSR reports, didn’t make practical and economic
sacrifices for LGBTQ advocacy. For example, companies didn’t alienate LGBTQ-discriminative
organizations, and didn’t financially invest in LGBTQ-supportive facilities and LGBTQ-specific
insurance for minority employees.
These two implications led me to investigate a recent US case where a Fortune 500
company stood out for a marginal LGBTQ issue and seemingly sacrificed its corporate interests
for LGBTQ advocacy.
By analyzing Target’s corporate involvement in North Carolina House Bill 2 (HB2)
controversy in 2016, I inquired how Target engaged itself in the national discussion of
transgender rights, what Target did to support LGBTQ community, and what Target sacrificed
and reaped during the controversy.
I also inquired why Target chose to be outspoken in this specific case. However, it is
difficult for researchers to conduct rigorous retrospective research on the real intentions of
Target’s involvement, which will be explained below.
Method
46
The method of this case study to identify and describe Target’s public relations practice
was to chronologically collect and analyze Target’s official news releases and media appearance
since the transgender bathroom controversy broke out. Data were collected on February 22, 2017.
Target’s news releases were collected both from its “press release” section
2
and its “news
& features” section
3
. Case-related keywords—“restroom,” “bathroom,” “transgender,” “LGBT,”
“gay,” and “gender”—were used for searching. All related articles were collected, including
those published before the controversy.
Media coverage was also collected to demonstrate how Target handled media inquiries,
how media narrative evolved, and how publics reacted. Newspaper data were collected from
LexisNexis Academic with the search keyword set as “Target AND transgender” and time stamp
set as “since April 26, 2016.” On April 26, 2016, Target announced its decision to “welcome
transgender team members and guests to use the restroom or fitting room facility that
corresponds with their gender identity” (Target Corporation, 2016). Database search returns
1,803 results. Considering reliability and credibility, newspaper articles (N=149) from The New
York Times, The Washington Post, and USA Today were downloaded and used for analysis.
Since LexisNexis Academic database doesn’t include TV/magazine/online/foreign news, media
coverage done by Reuters, CNN, MSNBC, Fortune, and etc, were also collected to supplement
the data.
North Carolina House Bill 2 Controversy
The Public Facilities Privacy & Security Act, officially named as An Act to Provide for
Single-sex Multiple Occupancy Bathroom and Changing Facilities in Schools and Public

2
https://corporate.target.com/press/releases
3
https://corporate.target.com/news-features
47
Agencies and to Create Statewide Consistency in Regulation of Employment and Public
Accommodations, and publicly known as House Bill 2, was passed by the North Carolina House
of Representatives on March 22, 2016 (Kopan & Scott, 2016; North Carolina House of
Representatives, 2016). The bill was signed into law by North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory
on March 23, 2016 (Tan, 2016).
Three parts compose the main body of the law, which affects LGBTQ community in
three ways. First, the law bars employment discrimination or abridgment on account of race,
religion, color, national origin, age, biological sex or handicap [italics added by author]; Second,
the law enforces statewide consistency concerning employment and contracting; Third, the law
declares multiple-occupancy single-sex bathrooms and changing facilities should be used in
accordance to biological sex stated on a person’s birth certificate (North Carolina House of
Representatives, 2016). The law thus bars local municipalities from creating their own rules to
prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, and forces transgender
people to use bathrooms and changing facilities that differ from their gender identity (Guo, 2016;
Tan, 2016).
The law made North Carolina the only state in the country that compelled transgender
individuals to use public bathrooms corresponding to their birth sex (Jenkins, 2016). The mayor
of Charlotte, North Carolina, Jennifer Roberts, called the bill “the most anti-LGBT legislation in
the country” (Kopan & Scott, 2016), which was picked up by other critics to denounce the law.
Target’s House Bill 2 Involvement
Target was not among the earliest corporations which took a stand in the debate. A
number of corporations and celebrities voiced their opposition against HB2 right after the story
broke out (Hiltzik, 2016).
48
Dow Chemical tweeted on March 24, 2016, “Dow is disappointed in the signing of NC
#HB2. We will continue to call for a comprehensive federal framework to ensure fairness for all”
(see Figure 10). Biogen also “opposes #NCGA attempt to undermine equality in NC via #HB2”
(see Figure 10). PayPal, another major corporation outspoken in the controversy, withdrew its
plan to open an operations center in Charlotte, North Carolina (Rao, 2016). NBA pulled its 2017
all-star game from Charlotte, North Carolina, due to the HB2 (see Figure 10). Other major
corporations, including Google, Apple, and IBM, also weighed in on social media (see Figure
10). Some celebrities, such as Bruce Springsteen, and Maroon 5, boycotted the law by canceling
their forthcoming shows in North Carolina and supporting LGBTQ community through social
media (see Figure 11).
On March 30, 2016, Human Rights Campaign sent an open letter to Pat McCrory, the
then governor of North Carolina, to urge the repeal of the House Bill 2 (Human Rights
Campaign, 2016). The open letter was signed by more than 90 business leaders which didn’t
include leadership from Target.
Target’s first opinion piece concerning North Carolina House Bill 2 was published nearly
one month after the bill was passed. On April 19, 2016, Target wrote in its “news & feature”
section that it welcomed “transgender team members and guests to use the restroom or fitting
room facility that corresponds with their gender identity” (Target Corporation, 2016). The press
release titled “continuing to stand for inclusivity” thrusted the retailer into the center of the
debate (Abrams, 2016). The New York Times calls it “the most prominent position taken by a
national retailer” (Abrams, 2016). Target spokeswoman Molly Snyder later said that the policy
actually had been in place for several years (Malcolm, 2016b).
49
After the announcement, Target received intense opposition from conservative activists
and lawmakers (Abrams, 2016). For example, an online petition
4
initiated by the American
Family Association to boycott Target has been signed by more than 1.4 million people. The
argument of the American Family Association was that a transgender-friendly restroom policy
would put women and young girls in danger, because “a man can simply say he ‘feels like a
woman today’ and enter the women’s restroom” (Malcolm, 2016a).
With the momentum building against Target, some other corporations followed suit, and
declared their restrooms transgender-friendly, which included Starbucks, Hudson’s Bay Co., and
Barnes & Noble (Malcolm, 2016b).
As far as customers, Target’s decision received mixed responses. USA Today described
the customer reaction as a “backlash” (Malcolm, 2016b). Many customers claimed they would
never shop at Target until the policy was revoked (see Figure 12) using hashtag #boycotttarget
on Twitter. Media thus started speculating the economic ramifications of the decision on which
Target refused to comment in April (Malcolm, 2016b).
On August 17, 2016, Target released its quarterly earnings result which showed a 9.7-
percent decline of earnings and a 7.2-percent slide in sales (Yu, 2016). Speaking of the reasons
for the sluggish sales, Target cited the difficult retail environment, and claimed the impact of the
bathroom policy on sales had not been detected (Halzack, 2016; Yu, 2016).
In the same conference call, Target also announced its decision to spend twenty-million
dollars on single-stall bathrooms, as a reaction to the boycott (Halzack, 2016). According to
Target spokesperson Katie Boylan, single-stall bathrooms were already available in about 1400
of its 1797 stores, while the new investment would be used to ensure that the single-stall option

4
http://afa.net/action-alerts/sign-the-boycott-target-pledge
50
was offered everywhere by the end of 2017 (Yu, 2016). The transgender-friendly bathroom
policy announced in April would still be in place (Yu, 2016).
Further Research Questions
Target was not among the earliest corporations which took a stand in the national debate.
Other major companies, as shown above, reacted much earlier than Target. Some of them took
rather radical action, such as pulling business from North Carolina, and criticizing the passage of
the law. Target, instead, became the main target of the public opposition after making a one-page
statement which didn’t even mention North Carolina.
According to the news articles collected in this case study, Target only made two
decisions as reactions to the House Bill 2, the first one being the announcement of transgender-
friendly bathrooms on April 19, and the second one being the announcement of building single-
stall bathrooms on August 17.
The intentions of these two organizational decisions haven’t been investigated by
organizational communication scholars and public relations scholars. Multiple questions can be
asked concerning Target’s involvement. For example, what took Target so long to respond to the
House Bill 2, in other words, what was under discussion between March 23 and April 19 during
which time many major corporations expressed their opinions. Another question that could be
asked is how the decision to construct single-stall restrooms was made, in the wake of the intense
boycott Target had already received.
However, investigating the real intentions behind Target’s two decisions could be
challenging, because no known observation was conducted inside Target during the decision
making. Subsequent research, such as interviews, focus groups, and surveys with Target’s
corporate public relations practitioners, may not fairly and objectively present how and why the
51
decisions were made. Inaccuracy of retrospective self-reported data was well recorded in many
social science studies (e.g., Bradburn, Sudman, Blair, & Stocking, 1978; Golden, 1992; Huber &
Power, 1985; P. M. Podsakoff, MacKenzie, Lee, & Podsakoff, 2003; Sallis & Saelens, 2000;
Tittle & Hill, 1967). It is highly possible that social desirability, consistency motif, and leniency
biases (P. M. Podsakoff et al., 2003) may drive interviewees who are Target employees to report
positively about Target’s decision making. Faulty memory may also contribute to the inaccuracy
of retrospective accounts (Golden, 1992). Thus, I recommend further research to use
ethnographic methods to investigate the real intentions by observing the process of
organizational CSR decision making.
52
Discussion
The objective of this thesis was to: 1) Present a global overview of LGBTQ CSR
discourse; 2) Showcase the differences of LGBTQ CSR narrative among different continents and
industries; 3) Construct a US-based non-profit LGBTQ advocacy paradigm; 4) Demonstrate the
differences between the altruistic non-profit LGBTQ advocacy paradigm and US companies’
for-profit LGBTQ CSR practice; 5) Introduce a special case for further research where a
corporation persisted in LGBTQ advocacy, despite potential financial loss.
The results support the first, second, and fourth hypotheses, while the third hypothesis is
not fully supported. Key findings of the global examination are: 1) Seven topics emerge from the
global LGBTQ CSR discourse, while six of them are about their internal LGBTQ stakeholders; 2)
Companies based in North America and Europe are more likely to present their LGBTQ efforts
in CSR reporting than companies based in Asia; 3) Companies in different continents construct
their LGBT CSR discourses differently, while Asian companies tend to miss more LGBT topics
than North American and European companies; 4) Companies in high-tech sectors and services
sectors are more committed to LGBTQ advocacy in their CSR reporting than those in traditional
sectors; 5) Companies in different sectors cover LGBTQ issues differently in their CSR reports,
while companies in traditional sectors tend to miss more LGBTQ topics than those in high-tech
and services sectors.
The first finding indicates that the global corporate LGBTQ advocacy narrative is highly
targeted at internal stakeholders, namely employees and suppliers. Though many companies
have LGBTQ-targeted marketing and advertising to solicit LGBT customers, they rarely report it
as their CSR progress. Maybe companies don’t see LGBTQ-targeted marketing as ethical and
praiseworthy, and thus exclude these LGBTQ-targeted achievements from their CSR reports. In
53
addition, most companies only assumed three kinds of social responsibilities, namely the
economic, legal, and ethical responsibilities (A. B. Carroll, 1991). The fact that the topic of
supporting external LGBTQ stakeholders was ranked the last indicates that companies rarely
assume the fourth responsibility—philanthropic responsibility. Potential ways to assume the
philanthropic LGBT responsibility include sponsoring LGBT events held by nonprofit
organizations, lobbying for better LGBT public policies, promoting LGBT rights through
products, and donating to LGBT advocacy groups. Companies’ reluctance to assume the fourth
responsibility may be due to their concerns that philanthropic LGBT advocacy will alienate non-
LGBT consumers. The suspicion is supported by the content analysis result of the US data set,
which will be discussed below.
The second and third findings show that North American and European companies are
much more progressive than Asian companies in pursuing LGBT advocacy. Since the LGBT
community is arguably less recognized in Asia, we may hypothesize that public opinion plays an
important role in determining corporate LGBT values. Considering the fact that no Asian country
has legally recognized domestic same-sex marriage (A. Carroll & Itaborahy, 2015), we may also
hypothesize that a company’s LGBT values are significantly affected by its domestic legal
system. Further research is needed to examine these factors.
The fourth and fifth findings resonate with previous research (e.g., Harrigan, 1981;
Brewer, 2001) about diversity in corporations which found that women were more represented
and justly treated in technology and services companies. This thesis shows that high-tech and
services companies are also more LGBTQ-friendly. More research is needed to explore if these
industries are more inclusive to all kinds of minority groups, and to explain why these industries
are more minority-friendly. A fair hypothesis is that high-tech and services companies have
54
closer proximity to consumers, which encourages them to be minority-friendly to earn better
reputations and solicit more consumers. Another possible explanation is that high-tech and
services companies are usually located in big cities where public opinion is more minority-
friendly, while traditional companies are located in less developed regions where public opinion
is more conservative.
A regional analysis of US companies and US NGOs was followed after the global
examination to have a closer look at the development of corporate LGBTQ advocacy in the
United States. Four themes, 11 sub-themes, and 19 practical activities were detected in HRC’s
2016 CEI report, which constructed the corporate LGBTQ advocacy paradigm. The topic
modeling result shows that 10 major topics emerge from the US Fortune 500 companies’
LGBTQ CSR discourse. Nine of the 10 topics can be located in the paradigm with one extra
topic, recognition of organizational LGBTQ achievements, unmatched. This topic also shows up
in the North American topic modeling result.
The LGBTQ CSR discourse constructed by US Fortune 500 companies is highly
homogenous, clustered and sometimes impracticable. Despite being linguistically unrelated, US
Topic 1 (develop inclusive corporate environment and support diversity), the most salient topic
as shown in the visualization result, actually contains US Topic 2 and US Topic 8, and overlaps
with US Topic 3, according to the corporate LGBTQ advocacy paradigm. Put in another way,
US Topic 2, 3, and 8 are basically several approaches whereby companies build their diverse and
inclusive corporate environments US Topic 1 envisions. This is understandable and predictable
because the bottom line of corporate LGBTQ advocacy is arguably the protection of companies’
most relevant LGBTQ stakeholder—LGBTQ employees. In the US context, LGBTQ employee
protection can be categorized as either legal responsibility or ethical responsibility depending on
55
in which state the company operates, due to the absence of a federal law protecting LGBTQ
employees (A. B. Carroll, 1979; 1983; 1991; Tilcsik, 2011).
The content analysis results offer a more detailed look at US Fortune 500 companies’
LGBTQ advocacy practice. Practical activities neglected by corporations also undermine the
presence of the topics they belong to. The reason transgender benefit is significantly neglected
may be that the corporate understanding of LGBTQ issues hasn’t been meticulous enough to
cater to the specific LGBTQ group of a relatively small population. All practical activities under
the sub-theme of training, facilities, and measures are underrepresented as the result shows. One
reasonable explanation is that companies saw these activities irrelevant to their CSR causes, and
thus didn’t mention them in their CSR reports in the first place. It is highly possible that
companies see training, facilities, and evaluation as issues of human resource management.
Also noticeable is that LGBTQ-specific alienation and its corresponding practical
activity—prohibition on support and services for LGBTQ-discriminative organizations/events—
are nearly nowhere to be found in both topic modeling and content analysis results. Companies’
reluctance to assume LGBTQ advocacy responsibility by using this specific approach may be
due to their concerns that alienating certain kinds of organizations and activities will
consequently alienate non-LGBTQ consumers (Um et al., 2015).
Previous research suggested that companies appearing LGBTQ-friendly may simply be
intended to solicit LGBT consumers (Githens, 2009). However, this intention is inconspicuous in
this research, since only 5 out of the 180 US companies mentioned LGBTQ marketing in their
CSR reports. But as discussed above, the reason for the absence of LGBTQ marketing may be
that US Fortune 500 companies didn’t see LGBTQ marketing as an ethical way of promoting
56
LGBTQ advocacy, and didn’t include related efforts in their CSR reports. Thus, this research
doesn’t substantiate, yet also doesn’t rule out, the possibility of the for-profit intention.
57
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Tables and Figures
Table 1. Industry Classification of 41 Sectors
High-tech industry sectors
1. Aerospace and Defense
2. Automobiles & Parts
3. Chemicals
4. Electronic & Electrical Equipment
5. Health Care Equipment & Services
6. Industrial Engineering
7. Pharmaceuticals & Biotechnology
8. Technology Hardware & Equipment
9. Software & Computer Services
Traditional industry sectors
10. Beverage
11. Construction & Materials
12. Electricity
13. Fixed Line Telecommunications
14. Forestry and Paper
15. Gas, Water & Multi-utilities
16. General Industrials
17. Industrial Metals & Mining
18. Industrial Transportation
19. Mining
20. Mobile Telecommunications
21. Oil and Gas Producers
22. Oil Equipment, services & Distribution
23. Travel & Leisure
24. Alternative Energy
Services industry sectors
25. Banks
26. Equity Investment Instruments
27. Food & Drug Retailers
28. Food Producers
29. Financial Services
30. General Retailers
31. Household Goods & Home Construction
32. Leisure Goods
33. Life Insurance
34. Media
35. Nonequity Investment Instruments
36. Non-life Insurance
37. Personal Goods
38. Real Estate Investment & Services
39. Real Estate Investment Trusts
40. Support Services
41. Tobacco

71
Table 2. Statistics on Examined Fortune Global 500 Companies by Continent and Industry

Global 500
CSR Reports Examined LGBT Mentioned
Number Percentage Number Percentage
North America 142 104 73.24% 69 66.35%
Europe 142 118 83.10% 58 49.15%
Asia 198 126 63.64% 23 18.25%
Oceania 8 8 100.00% 7 87.50%
South America 10 5 50.00% 1 20.00%
Total 500 361 72.20% 158 43.77%

Global 500
CSR Reports Examined LGBT Mentioned
Number Percentage Number Percentage
High-tech 113 85 75.22% 45 52.94%
Traditional 195 134 68.72% 41 30.60%
Services 186 136 73.12% 71 52.21%
Total 494 355 71.86% 157 44.23%

72
Table 3. Global Topics, Fortune Global 500 (2015)
Global Topics Topic 1 Topic 2 Topic 3 Topic 4 Topic 5 Topic 6 Topic 7 Topic 8 Topic 9
1 divers employe lgbt supplier health human manag support colleagu
2 employe work compani busi benefit right increas sponsor custom
3 inclus polici corpor divers associ promot issu project equal
4 work sexual network own care group compani day bank
5 group discrimin member program compani compani discrimin forum lgbti
6 women age veteran nation social individu intern celebr pride
7 peopl nation equal minor insur issu femal proud view
8 busi gender nation spend invest global report year show
9 develop orient index small offer conduct posit launch introduc
10 support religion team enterpris life train group pride orient
11 disabl status resourc compani medic understand year young foundat
12 manag equal american veteran plan awar social citi retir
13 organ race program women partner activ agreement annual rank
14 network opportun gay council well violat code event aid
15 global respect score develop serv lgbt promot children approach
16 includ employ communiti student sex principl aim fund live
17 cultur law lesbian disabl domest corpor sign cultur start
18 workforc base transgend suppli paid particip board open support
19 communiti disabl includ commerc cost report charter technolog product
20 gender labor bisexu mentor assist japan process scholarship role

73
Table 4. North American Topics, Fortune Global 500 (2015)
North American Topics Topic 1 Topic 2 Topic 3 Topic 4 Topic 5 Topic 6 Topic 7 Topic 8 Topic 9
1 divers supplier polici lgbt health right compani program lgbt
2 employe busi gender equal associ human supplier forum communiti
3 busi divers orient corpor benefit commit execut student market
4 inclus own status index invest report ebrg launch support
5 develop spend sexual workplac nation inclus health senior servic
6 compani program equal score care govern engin partnership famili
7 includ women law year medic principl societi leadership pride
8 support enterpris work compani social challeng small project proud
9 work nation ident polici partner free sourc firm canada
10 group minor origin top time labor career young foundat
11 disabl small religion employ well onlin hispan sponsor product
12 network council race cei assist bias person opportun aid
13 communiti chamber discrimin issu cost unconsci job educ store
14 women commerc age rate plan intern differ industri year
15 member suppli harass gay program respons extern volunt research
16 veteran chain partner percent sex legisl student voluntari show
17 peopl increas protect transgend serv issu colleg earli celebr
18 provid unit color practic coverag relat posit scholarship citi
19 organ million understand bisexu supplier action million encourag gm
20 opportun veteran foster generat respons discuss standard technolog td

74
Table 5. European Topics, Fortune Global 500 (2015)
European Topics Topic 1 Topic 2 Topic 3 Topic 4 Topic 5 Topic 6 Topic 7
1 employe compani gay inclus report peopl cultur
2 divers discrimin lesbian divers code supplier organ
3 group equal year global year program charter
4 work social bisexu cultur intern sustain creat
5 gender base transgend leadership respons servic meet
6 manag polici lgbt includ relat client sign
7 women opportun support busi employe compani project
8 disabl respect colleagu lgbt work offer open
9 sexual agreement uk focus manag develop discuss
10 orient employ inclus conduct union provid german
11 develop perform divers women receiv state held
12 peopl fair equal initi issu busi prejudic
13 commit employe network respons depart person charta
14 network promot top region discrimin relationship attend
15 promot principl survey line access unit ident
16 support corpor event recogn assess practic european
17 train person understand worldwid collabor own comunico
18 busi skill engag foster process procur io
19 age conduct leader advanc control divers novemb
20 ethnic remuner greater behavior includ make public

75
Table 6. Asian Topics, Fortune Global 500 (2015)
Asia Topics Topic 1 Topic 2 Topic 3 Topic 4 Topic 5 Topic 6 Topic 7
1 employe human human employe manag train polici
2 sexual promot right divers femal recruit develop
3 labor right respect cultur meet provid law
4 work work group compani personnel peopl principl
5 discrimin group global global engag social direct
6 disabl lgbt activ environ recruit year insur
7 status compani code program educ graduat oper
8 orient employe age place workforc learn talent
9 nation divers corpor gender experi equal global
10 gender issu conduct nation gender program annual
11 busi organ harass conduct free divis regul
12 race awar standard ensur disabl level product
13 religion japan violat discrimin countri right inform
14 employ individu physic base person fair accord
15 supplier includ ethic custom basic school competit
16 law understand countri background knowledg cooper descript
17 base manag principl contribut fy face opportun
18 compani particip social orient growth interview organ
19 opportun gay regul workplac line job offer
20 polici support region high studi yakushi affirm

76
Table 7. High-Tech Topics, Fortune Global 500 (2015)
High-Tech Topics Topic 1 Topic 2 Topic 3 Topic 4 Topic 5 Topic 6 Topic 7
1 divers employe compani employe right supplier forum
2 employe labor disabl divers human divers cei
3 work polici busi cultur promot small event
4 inclus nation execut gender group busi advanc
5 develop sexual health group train own index
6 lgbt discrimin communiti manag issu spend score
7 global status nation compani awar year diego
8 busi harass engin orient relat nation held
9 women orient ebrg execut compani procur hrc
10 support religion career respect understand minor time
11 equal work sponsor age principl veteran annual
12 peopl age custom issu report countri project
13 program disabl hispan promot activ state summit
14 leadership race differ understand busi recogn san
15 group respect allianc ethnic countri suppli lab
16 compani base includ women guid million stuttgart
17 provid employ talent custom japan program support
18 organ opportun resourc offic particip mentor network
19 creat law societi nation conduct report oper
20 commit gender black intern behavior top sponsor

77
Table 8. Services Topics, Fortune Global 500 (2015)
Services Topics Topic 1 Topic 2 Topic 3 Topic 4 Topic 5 Topic 6
1 divers busi employe associ code communiti
2 employe supplier discrimin health manag support
3 inclus nation sexual compani initi foundat
4 network divers work benefit issu custom
5 lgbt minor orient invest discrimin market
6 work program gender member bank lgbti
7 disabl council respons team access peopl
8 develop includ report plan approach make
9 group percent religion nation number day
10 support own race divers femal canada
11 women enterpris age care process pride
12 peopl women social talent year small
13 compani hispan respect cost age retir
14 busi american nation leadership depart aid
15 equal black equal serv plan sponsor
16 year spend divers social launch product
17 includ veteran busi medic aim greater
18 communiti sponsor promot partner ethic life
19 organ chamber human time includ young
20 provid commerc law account intern store

78
Table 9. Traditional Topics, Fortune Global 500 (2015)
Traditional Topics Topic 1 Topic 2 Topic 3 Topic 4 Topic 5 Topic 6 Topic 7
1 divers gender employ equal network supplier health
2 employe sexual oper group profession year benefit
3 inclus nation group compani resourc meet american
4 busi disabl workforc employe team own corpor
5 program orient percent promot veteran includ serv
6 peopl age employe women launch project sex
7 women opportun work worker erg peopl domest
8 support manag develop disabl american suppli score
9 lgbt human opportun board career sustain cei
10 work religion polici increas asian chain lgbt
11 compani discrimin femal job disabl discrimin percent
12 group race ensur manag provid intern resourc
13 organ status represent orient addit differ earn
14 communiti employ requir fair success union volunt
15 member global support remuner engin communic employe
16 initi right includ agreement hispan european includ
17 develop includ increas polici mentor spend communiti
18 cultur respect fy day voluntari minor advisori
19 custom base perform men nation rang citi
20 gay environ repres member forum comunico medic

79
Table 10. Overview of Topic Modeling Results, Fortune Global 500 (2015)

North America Europe Asia High-tech Services Traditional
Global Topics
Diverse/Inclusive Workplace √ √ √ √ √ √
Prohibit Discrimination √ √ √ √ √ √
Network/Community √ √

√ √ √
Supplier Diversity √ √

√ √ √
Health Benefit √

√ ⃝ (Probably Only American)
Human Rights √

√ √

Event/Project Sponsorship ⃝ (Educational Programs)

√

Extra Topics

Awards/Scores √

√

Collaborative Charters

√

Awareness and Training

√

80
Table 11. US Topics (10 Topics), US Fortune 500 (2016)
Topic 1 Topic 2 Topic 3 Topic 4 Topic 5 Topic 6 Topic 7 Topic 8 Topic 9 Topic 10 Topic 11
1 divers employe supplier equal employe health equal right lgbt lgbt patient
2 inclus gender busi corpor network employe marriag human includ firm energi
3 busi status divers lgbt group benefit communiti conduct gay share crewmemb
4 employe employ own compani resourc program transgend global media student hiv
5 compani disabl minor top erg offer gay report showtim project access
6 work orient enterpris index profession plan discrimin code glaad school rate
7 support discrimin council nation women compani lgbt employe event young center
8 develop race nation score american partner bisexu bias annual campaign public
9 program age small gay hispan ebrg court supplier day person healthcar
10 communiti sexual women associ support well support busi pride inspir california
11 cultur origin veteran workplac african person lesbian rang communiti import rais
12 women polici lesbian award black sex challeng commit show chm indiana
13 peopl law spend lesbian asian associ host practic real organ prevent
14 organ religion gay work alli insur protect train citi feel march
15 includ includ disabl transgend provid care discuss process network scholarship clinic
16 leadership veteran develop employ lesbian perform polici work serv messag aid
17 group nation chamber bisexu transgend reward make principl presid deutsch healthgrad
18 talent ident program receiv latino elig sex communic vice gay health
19 opportun color american magazin issu healthi suprem govern execut partnership student
20 member harass suppli year bisexu life commit ethic award high advoc

81
Table 12. US Topics (15 Topics), US Fortune 500 (2016)

Topic 1 Topic 2 Topic 3 Topic 4 Topic 5 Topic 6 Topic 7 Topic 8 Topic 9 Topic 10 Topic 11 Topic 12 Topic 13 Topic 14 Topic 15
1 divers employe supplier lgbt top employe employe right student showtim lgbt discrimin marriag associ aep
2 employe status busi equal compani health network human volunt media organ sustain court arg board
3 inclus gender divers lesbian corpor benefit group conduct educ glaad day energi sex real director
4 busi employ own gay award program erg global proud network campaign lgbtq colleagu estat star
5 compani race minor corpor magazin plan resourc report communiti event gay live suprem canada larg
6 work orient enterpris bisexu list ebrg profession code initi issu inspir protect bni profession ibmer
7 develop disabl small transgend nation compani hispan includ black seri youth public mellon home ing
8 program age nation index employ offer black principl children program messag legisl legal addit patient
9 support origin council score women well support train base presid communiti alli amicus tcc indiana
10 group sexual spend support equal life asian ethic million award live small gender provid skill
11 women includ includ workplac engin care women safeti center vice spirit embrac sign rate rate
12 communiti polici lesbian work american person gay issu young lgbt deutsch act rule buy forc
13 cultur law veteran foundat index domest american process sponsor includ creat vision state communiti ment
14 peopl religion women network rank execut latino commit host air team worker issu healthi clinic
15 organ discrimin gay polici recogn financi lesbian chapter fund gay import run challeng studi healthgrad
16 leadership work suppli practic black insur month complianc crewmemb serv feel chang start divers oklahoma
17 global nation servic creat associ part bisexu respect hiv york show pay allow build tion
18 opportun harass chamber annual score spous alli protect provid cabl featur risk obergefel conduct app
19 year opportun commerc receiv receiv elig pacif communic execut board gender thrive ireland friend cgnc
20 lgbt ident disabl perfect friend partner council rang citi honor person indiana level proud commiss

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Table 13. NGO LGBTQ Advocacy Paradigm
Theme Sub-Theme Practical Activity
Equal Employment
Sexual Orientation Protections Sexual Orientation Non-Discrimination Policies
Gender Identity Protections Gender Identity Non-Discrimination Policies
Global Extension Non-Discrimination Policies Globally
Supplier Extension Non-Discrimination Policies for Suppliers
Employment Benefits
Equivalent Healthcare Benefits Equivalent Healthcare Benefits (COBRA, Dental, Vision, Legal Dependent Coverage)
Equivalent Non-Healthcare Benefits
Bereavement Leave
Employer-Provided Supplemental Life insurance for a Partner
Relocation/Travel Assistance
Adoption Assistance
Qualified Joint and Survivor Annuity for Partners
Qualified Pre-Retirement Survivor Annuity for Partners
Cash Balance
Rollover and Hardship Options
Retiree Health Care Benefits
Employee Discounts
Transgender Benefits
Transgender Health Insurance
Transgender Short-Term Medical Leave
Transgender Mental Health Benefit
Transgender Pharmaceutical Coverage
Transgender Laboratory Coverage
Coverage for Sex Reassignment Surgery and Other Transition-Related/Non-
Transition Services
Organizational LGBTQ Competency
Training, Facilities, and Measures
LGBTQ Diversity Training Programs for Employees
LGBTQ Diversity Training Programs for Leadership
Supportive Restroom and Other Facilities
Evaluation of Leadership and Employees on LGBTQ Diversity Performance
Survey of Employees' LGBTQ Statuses
Organizational Networks LGBTQ Employee Resource Groups/Networks/Councils
Public Commitment
LGBTQ-Specific Engagement
Participation in LGBTQ-Focused Events
Supplier Diversity Programs (LGBTQ)
LGBTQ Marketing
Philanthropic Support for External LGBTQ Community
Support for LGBTQ-Inclusive Legislation/Public Policies
LGBTQ-Specific Alienation Prohibition on Support and Services for LGBTQ-Discriminative Organizations/Events

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Table 14. US CSR Topics & Practice vs NGO Paradigm
Theme Sub-Theme
Practical Activity
Activity Options n (N=180) Percentage
Equal Employment (Topic 1)
Sexual Orientation Protections (Topic 2) Sexual Orientation Non-Discrimination Policies 71 39.44%
Gender Identity Protections (Topic 2) Gender Identity Non-Discrimination Policies 49 27.22%
Global Extension (Topic 8) Non-Discrimination Policies Globally 5 2.78%
Supplier Extension (Topic 3) Non-Discrimination Policies for Suppliers 5 2.78%
Employment Benefits
Equivalent Healthcare Benefits (Topic 6) Equivalent Healthcare Benefits (COBRA, Dental, Vision, Legal Dependent Coverage) 14 7.78%
Equivalent Non-Healthcare Benefits (Topic 6)
Bereavement Leave
Employer-Provided Supplemental Life insurance for a Partner
Relocation/Travel Assistance
Adoption Assistance
Qualified Joint and Survivor Annuity for Partners
Qualified Pre-Retirement Survivor Annuity for Partners
Cash Balance
Rollover and Hardship Options
Retiree Health Care Benefits
Employee Discounts
19 10.56%
Transgender Benefits
Transgender Health Insurance
Transgender Short-Term Medical Leave
Transgender Mental Health Benefit
Transgender Pharmaceutical Coverage
Transgender Laboratory Coverage
Coverage for Sex Reassignment Surgery and Other Transition-Related/Non-
Transition Services
7 3.89%
Organizational LGBTQ Competency
Training, Facilities, and Measures
LGBTQ Diversity Training Programs for Employees 13 7.22%
LGBTQ Diversity Training Programs for Leadership 8 4.44%
Supportive Restroom and Other Facilities 0 0.00%
Evaluation of Leadership and Employees on LGBTQ Diversity Performance 2 1.11%
Survey of Employees' LGBTQ Statuses 5 2.78%
Organizational Networks (Topic 5) LGBTQ Employee Resource Groups/Networks/Councils 84 46.67%
Public Commitment
LGBTQ-Specific Engagement (Topic 3, 7, 9, 10)
Participation in LGBTQ-Focused Events 33 18.33%
Supplier Diversity Programs (LGBTQ) 36 20.00%
LGBTQ Marketing 11 6.11%
Philanthropic Support for External LGBTQ Community 26 14.44%
Support for LGBTQ-Inclusive Legislation/Public Policies 22 12.22%
LGBTQ-Specific Alienation Prohibition on Support and Services for LGBTQ-Discriminative Organizations/Events 5 2.78%
Extra Topic from CSR Discourse:
Recognition of Organizational LGBTQ Achievements (Topic 4)
No Activity 25 13.89%

84
Figure 1. Visualization of Global Topics, Fortune Global 500 (2015)

85
Figure 2. Visualization of North American Topics, Fortune Global 500 (2015)

86
Figure 3. Visualization of European Topics, Fortune Global 500 (2015)

87
Figure 4. Visualization of Asian Topics, Fortune Global 500 (2015)

88
Figure 5. Visualization of High-Tech Topics, Fortune Global 500 (2015)

89
Figure 6. Visualization of Services Topics, Fortune Global 500 (2015)

90
Figure 7. Visualization of Traditional Topics, Fortune Global 500 (2015)

91
Figure 8. Visualization of US Topics (11), US Fortune 500 (2016)

92
Figure 9. Visualization of US Topics (15), US Fortune 500 (2016)

93
Figure 10. Organizations’ Responses to North Carolina House Bill 2

94
Figure 11. Celebrities’ Responses to North Carolina House Bill 2

95
Figure 12. Customers’ Reactions to Target’s Decision

96
Appendix A: Topic Modeling R Code
# LGBTQ CSR Thesis Global All

## Install and load packages

install.packages("lda")
install.packages("LDAvis")
install.packages("tm")
install.packages("topicmodels")
install.packages("SnowballC") # for its filtering packages
install.packages("servr") # to export html
install.packages("textreg") # to convert tm corpus to vector
library(lda)
library(LDAvis)
library(tm)
library(topicmodels)
library(SnowballC)
library(servr)
library(textreg)

setwd("/Users/alvinzhou/Downloads/Thesis/All")

## Import data

rawdata= read.csv(file.choose(), header=F) # load LGBTQ CSR Thesis Global All.csv
data=as.vector(rawdata[1:158, 3])

## Clean data

data = tolower(data) # force to lowercase

stopwords = stopwords("SMART") # three stopword lists, we use SMART
cstopwords = read.csv(file.choose(), header=F) # load Company Stopwords.csv
cstopwords = as.vector(cstopwords[1:230, 1])
stopwords = as.vector(c(stopwords, cstopwords, "human rights campaign"))
data = removeWords(data, stopwords) # remove stopwords

data = gsub("'", "", data) # remove apostrophes
data = gsub("[[:punct:]]", " ", data) # replace punctuation with space
data = gsub("[[:digit:]]", " ", data) # remove digits
data = gsub("[[:cntrl:]]", " ", data) # replace control characters with space
data = gsub("^[[:space:]]+", "", data) # remove whitespace at beginning of documents
data = gsub("[[:space:]]+$", "", data) # remove whitespace at end of documents
data = stripWhitespace(data) # remove excessive spaces

97
## Stemming and convert back to vector

datacorpus = Corpus(VectorSource(data)) # create corpus from vector
datacorpus = tm_map(datacorpus, stemDocument) # stemming
writeLines(as.character(datacorpus[[94]])) # examination
data = as.vector(convert.tm.to.character(datacorpus)) # convert back to vector

## Generate term table

data1 = strsplit(data, "[[:space:]]+") # tokenize on space
term.table = table(unlist(data1)) # compute the table of terms
term.table = sort(term.table, decreasing = TRUE)
vocab = names(term.table)

## Put the documents into lda format

get.terms = function(x){
index = match(x, vocab)
index = index[!is.na(index)]
rbind(as.integer(index - 1), as.integer(rep(1, length(index))))
}
data2 = lapply(data1, get.terms)

## Compute some statistics

D <- length(data2) # number of documents
W <- length(vocab) # number of terms in the vocab
write.csv(term.table, file="term.table.csv") # export term table
term.frequency <- as.integer(term.table) # needed for visualization
doc.length <- sapply(data2, function(x) sum(x[2, ])) # number of tokens per document

## Set up parameters and get the result

K = 15 # number of topics
iter = 4000 # number of iterations
burnin = 400 # number of initial iterations to ignore
alpha = 0.1 # the scalar value of the dirichlet hyperparameter for topic proportions
eta = 0.1 # the scalar value of the dirichlet hyperparamater for topic multinomials
set.seed(777)

result15 = lda.collapsed.gibbs.sampler(documents = data2, K = K, vocab = vocab, num.iterations
= iter, alpha = alpha, eta = eta, initial = NULL, burnin = burnin, compute.log.likelihood = TRUE)

top.words = top.topic.words(result15$topics, 20, by.score=F)
write.csv(top.words, file=paste(K,"Topics.csv"))
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## Visualization

theta = t(apply(result15$document_sums + alpha, 2, function(x) x/sum(x)))
phi = t(apply(t(result15$topics) + eta, 2, function(x) x/sum(x)))

visresult = list(phi = phi, theta = theta, doc.length = doc.length, vocab = vocab, term.frequency =
term.frequency)

json = createJSON(phi = visresult$phi, # create the JSON object for visualization theta =
visresult$theta, doc.length = visresult$doc.length, vocab = visresult$vocab, term.frequency =
visresult$term.frequency)

serVis(json, out.dir = 'vis15', open.browser = F)
99
Appendix B: Content Analysis Coding Instruction
1. Do passages mention sexual orientation non-discrimination? (Yes/No)
• Yes: We embrace a meritocracy of ideas without regard to sex, race, ethnicity,
national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, protected veteran, or disability
status.
• No: We look at diversity from all angles, whether it concerns gender, ethnicity,
culture, generation, sexual orientation and gender identity, and religion.
2. Do passages mention gender identity non-discrimination? (Yes/No)
3. Do passages mention global non-discrimination for sexual orientation or gender identity?
(Yes/No)
4. Do passages mention non-discrimination of sexual orientation or gender identity for
suppliers? (Yes/No)
5. Do passages mention equivalent healthcare benefits (COBRA, Dental, Vision, Legal
Dependent Coverage) for LGBTQ employees? (Yes/No)
6. Do passages mention other equivalent benefits for LGBTQ employees, such as
bereavement leave, relocation/travel assistance, adoption assistance, retiree benefits, and
employee discounts? (Yes/No)
7. Do passages mention specific benefits for transgender employees, such as transgender
health insurance, transgender mental health benefit, transgender laboratory coverage, and
coverage for sex reassignment surgery? (Yes/No)
8. Do passages mention diversity training programs (e.g., teach employees to respect
LGBTQ community) for new or old employees? (Yes/No)
100
9. Do passages mention diversity training programs (e.g., teach leaders about corporate
LGBTQ-inclusive policies) for leadership? (Yes/No)
10. Do passages mention supportive facilities for LGBTQ employees, for example all-
gender restrooms? (Yes/No)
11. Do passages mention that the company includes LGBTQ diversity performance in its
evaluation of leadership and employees? (Yes/No)
12. Do passages mention the company’s employee survey (must be conducted by the
company) which includes sexual orientation or gender identity in minority statuses?
(Yes/No)
13. Do passages mention that the company has LGBTQ employee (resource)
groups/networks/councils? (Yes/No)
14. Do passages mention the company’s recent LGBTQ-focused event activities, such as
LGBTQ job affair, and Pride March, including participation and hosting? (Yes/No)
15. Do passages mention the company’s supplier diversity programs for LGBTQ advocacy?
(Yes/No)
16. Do passages mention the company’s marketing / advertising to LGBTQ customers, or
marketing / advertising with LGBTQ content? (Yes/No)
17. Do passages mention the company’s philanthropic support of outside LGBTQ
communities, such as event sponsorship, scholarship, and financial giving to LGBTQ
organizations? (Yes/No)
18. Do passages mention the company’s support for LGBTQ-inclusive legislation / public
policies? (Yes/No)
101
19. Do passages mention the company’s prohibition on corporate giving to discriminative
organizations or withdrawal of business from discriminative events/regions? (Yes/No)

Note: All entries coded as “yes” should be specifically LGBTQ-related. For example,
“we have supplier diversity programs to support women-owned supplier” and “we prefer to use
diversity-certified suppliers” should not be coded as “supplier diversity programs for LGBTQ
advocacy.

Asset Metadata

Creator Zhou, Yixiao (Alvin) (author)

Core Title Public relations as a diversity management approach: a big-data examination of CSR strategies and activities for corporate LGBTQ advocacy

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

School Annenberg School for Communication

Degree Master of Arts

Degree Program Strategic Public Relations

Publication Date 03/29/2017

Defense Date 03/29/2017

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag big data,CSR,diversity,LGBTQ,OAI-PMH Harvest,Public Relations,topic modeling

Language English

Advisor Yang, Aimei (committee chair), Gross, Larry (committee member), Kozinets, Robert (committee member)

Creator Email alvinyxz92@icloud.com,yixiaoz@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c40-349931

Unique identifier UC11258390

Identifier etd-ZhouYixiao-5153.pdf (filename),usctheses-c40-349931 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-ZhouYixiao-5153.pdf

Dmrecord 349931

Document Type Thesis

Rights Zhou, Yixiao (Alvin)

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA

Abstract (if available)

Abstract Much communication and management scholarship has examined corporate social responsibility (CSR) and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer (LGBTQ) community separately. However, little attention was paid to explore LGBTQ issues in the context of CSR. This thesis tried to fill this knowledge gap by comprehensively and comparatively examining global and US corporate social responsibility strategies and activities for LGBTQ advocacy from a public relations perspective. Three hundred and sixty-one annual CSR reports from Fortune Global 500 companies and 308 annual CSR reports from Fortune US 500 companies were collected to represent corporate LGBTQ values globally and in the US. Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index (CEI) report was used to represent non-profit LGBTQ values. A big data analysis method—topic modeling, along with content analysis, was used to analyze the data. Results showed topical and practical discrepancies of corporate LGBTQ advocacy demonstrated by Fortune Global 500, Fortune US 500, and non-profit LGBTQ organizations. In the wake of the scarcity of pragmatic LGBTQ advocacy activities in economically affluent companies’ CSR narrative, a case study of Target’s involvement in North Carolina House Bill 2 controversy was followed. Overall, this thesis developed the intersection of CSR and LGBTQ research.