Investigations Regarding the Linguistic Register Used by Managers to Convey to Stakeholders a Positive View of Their Company, in the Context of the Business Sustainability Desideratum

Ionel Bostan,Magdalena Danileț,Mihaela Ifrim,Viorica Chirilă,Ionela-Corina Chersan

doi:10.3390/su12176867

Ionel Bostan, Magdalena Danileț + Show 3 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/su12176867

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Abstract

This paper is based on an analysis of the content of management reports (annual, integrated), on the activity of European multinational companies (listed on the Stock Exchange). For this purpose, we conducted a content analysis of company management letters which open integrated and annual reports of European multinational listed companies. The data comprised a corpus of letters and statements of chairmen and/or executive directors in five environmentally sensitive industries that were analysed using Wmatrix4 software. The identified key words, the preferred semantic domains and the tone of emotional register from the letters of managers provide significant evidence on what kind of information they contain and how these managers want to share it with their stakeholders. Our results show that managers are interested in the optimistic presentation of the mission, results and future plans of their companies. We found that words such as like, confidence, proud or trust are common on the emotional map of these letters, but the preferences in use are unequally distributed among the five analysed sectors. We also report that the word “sustainability” is among the key terms found in letters and statements of managers. Finally, for each of the five corpuses, our study proved that, beyond common issues, different economic domains prefer different topics, using a significantly different lexical register both in terms of relative frequency of common key-words and diversity of words within the same semantic domain. The study systematizes a set of key-words and semantic domains used to convey positive emotions, avoiding those with negative connotations, in order to provide an image of a company that acts in a sustainable manner. This could be successfully used by corporate communicators of a wide range of companies who want to comply with the best practices of integrated reporting.

Highlights

The issue of integrated reporting has been widely discussed by both researchers and policy makers, as it is one of the key challenges in current corporate reporting
We aimed to identify the linguistic register used to convey to stakeholders a specific image of a company by conducting a content analysis of company management letters opening the integrated and annual reports of European multinational listed companies
The selection of keywords was made by log-likelihood (LL) values calculated by its relation to British National Corpus (BNC) Sampler Written, LL > 6.63 (p < 0.01) using the Wmatrix4 software

Summary

Introduction

The issue of integrated reporting has been widely discussed by both researchers and policy makers, as it is one of the key challenges in current corporate reporting. After 2013, when IIRC published the International Integrated Reporting Framework (IIRF), the debate widened its scope, and consultancies, auditors and investors have become highly interested in integrating reporting It was mandatory only for companies listed on Johannesburg Stock Exchange, reporting in compliance with IIRF has quickly spread in recent years due to the fact that new corporate reporting practice aims to support companies in getting a better understanding of the way in which they create value, and to enable them to communicate financial and non-financial performance more efficiently to stakeholders. In 2011, after the launch of the IIRC Pilot Program, a database (Emerging Integrated Reporting Database—http://examples.theiirc.org/home) was developed comprising reports uploaded by participant companies This database provides key indices on the spread of IR in different jurisdictions (for example, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Spain, Australia, Singapore, Japan, USA). Efforts made to impose IIRF as a reference for integrated reporting have led to new agreements between IIRC and international regulatory bodies (for example, Memorandum of Understanding with the International Accounting Standard Board and the Global Reporting Initiative, both signed in 2013)

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