Dr. Amy O’Connor (Ph.D., Purdue University) is an associate professor in the Hubbard School of Journalism & Mass Communication at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. Prior to becoming an academic, she spent 8 years working in advertising and public relations at DDB Chicago and the National Kidney Foundation.
Her research explores how corporations and stakeholders communicatively co-construct what corporate social responsibility (CSR) means and the outcomes that emerge. O’Connor’s research approach is grounded in the belief that the value of CSR is constituted through communication, subject to institutional level pressures, and is relationship based.
O’Connor’s most recent research is a multi-year ethnography that investigates the symbolic as well as actual meanings of CSR, how CSR is enacted in the everyday interactions of community members and mine workers, and the shared values, practices, behaviors, beliefs, and language surrounding CSR on Minnesota’s Iron Range. The results are forthcoming in a book published by the University of Michigan Press.
In 2022, O’Connor edited the Routledge Handbook on Corporate Social Responsibility which won the prestigious National Communication Association Public Relations book of the year award. In 2020, she was identified as the “most popular and influential scholar” in the network of communication scholars researching corporate social responsibility.
MSC Courses:
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Crisis Communication Management, Custom Leadership Program