Amy O’Connor, assistant professor of communication, and former faculty member Michelle Shumate, now an assistant professor at the University of Illinois, have written a manuscript titled "Corporate Reporting of Cross-Sector Alliances: The Portfolio of NGO Partners Communicated on Corporate Web Sites.” The article has been accepted for publication in the journal Communication Monographs.
The research tests two propositions of O'Connor and Shumate’s Symbiotic Sustainability Model concerning the number and type of non-government organization alliances likely to be communicated by corporations. The work demonstrates that most corporations only communicate alliances with a few non-government organizations and with one non-government organization in an issue industry.
According to the researchers, the results suggest that corporations in the same economic industry are likely to communicate alliances with different non-government organizations in the same issue industries.