Corporate self, corporate reputation and corporate annual reports: re-enrolling Goffman

Abstract

Although Goffman's work is widely invoked in the study of corporate reputations and of corporate annual reports, its use is often marked by an elision between the embodied self and the corporate ‘self’. In re-reading Goffman to clarify that effect, we bracket the assumption of a distinct ‘human nature’. We then select aspects of his ‘impression management’—defining the situation, holding secrets, invoking tact, passing the discreditable, and covering ‘dirty work’—to show how one Australian-based multinational forestry and manufacturing company, Amcor, uses its annual reports to set the interactive terms for construction of its reputation.