Corporate social responsibility employment narratives: a linguistic analysis

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, it investigates whether and to what extent “linguistic hedging”, an impression management form of linguistic expression that conveys an ambiguous level of commitment, is used in corporate social responsibility (CSR) employment narratives; and second, it explores whether there is any difference in the use of linguistic hedging between written and spoken corporate forms of language. It mobilises these objectives by examining employee-related narratives made by electronic manufacturing services (EMS) providers domiciled in Taiwan, in the context of labour malpractice incidents. Design/methodology/approach Two groups of data are examined: corporate responsibility reports (written language) and interviews and speeches of corporate founders and senior executives (spoken language). The research sample is ten Taiwanese EMS firms, all of which attracted public criticism and scrutiny due to a series of employee-related incidents. The sample period is between 2009 and 2013. Linguistic hedging is measured quantitatively by the relative word frequency of hedges, using the concordance software ANTCONC, with findings interpreted through the lens of legitimacy theory and impression management. Findings The study found that hedging was evident in CSR narratives. The EMS providers in Taiwan appeared to use hedging in employee-related disclosures to manage legitimacy challenges due to employee-related incidents that had happened in their assembly plants. The adjustments in employee-related disclosures made by the EMS firms as a legitimation strategy can be seen as a rhetoric device of impression management or a form of symbolic legitimation to persuade society to restore their legitimacy status. Further, overall hedging was more frequently used in spoken than written language, which suggests that rhetorical hedging in written narratives is more likely to be a deliberate choice of tactics to influence stakeholder perceptions and thereby manage corporate legitimacy. Originality/value The study introduces a new analytical technique, linguistic hedging, into the CSR literature. This enriches research methods used in this field, providing more compelling insights into the relationship between the use of language and CSR narratives in the process of corporate legitimation of employee-related practices. This study thus provides a platform for future computational-linguistics studies in the field of CSR.

Gender-related discourses in corporate annual reports: an exploratory study on the Bangladeshi companies

“…The annual reports of the companies listed under the Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE) are taken for the SDA. Annual reports are considered as a credible source of corporate narratives in prior studies (see, for example, Dumay et al, 2015;Edgar et al, 2018;Kuruppu et al, 2019;Li and Haque, 2019;Lupu and Sandu, 2017;Nwagbara and Belal, 2019). The latest annual reports (mostly of 2017) are downloaded from official websites of listed companies between 22nd December and 31st December 2018.…”

“…In qualitative tradition, corporate narratives and textual disclosures have been explored through the lens of legitimacy (Adams et al , 1998; Brown and Deegan, 1998; Dumay et al , 2015; Kuruppu et al , 2019; Lupu and Sandu, 2017), impression management (Edgar et al , 2018; Higgins and Walker, 2012; Li and Haque, 2019; Neu et al , 1998; Solomon et al , 2013), media attention (Brown and Deegan, 1998; Deegan and Islam, 2014) and stakeholder orientation (Adams, 2006; Belal and Owen, 2007; Islam and Deegan, 2008) among many other theories. Some of these studies have drawn evidence based on theoretical triangulation – combining constructs of multiple theories while interpreting the narrative disclosures (Dumay et al , 2015; Edgar et al , 2018; Kuruppu et al , 2019).…”

“…Moreover, the perceived benefits of socio-environmental activities induce firms to engage in the symbolic representation of their CSR performance (Bansal and Kistruck, 2006; Higgins and Walker, 2012). Recently, researchers show the use of impression management to maintain organizational legitimacy in the context of financial services (Edgar et al , 2018) and manufacturing services (Li and Haque, 2019). Drawing from the annual report narratives of the UK private sector private finance initiative (PFI) companies, Edgar et al (2018) contend that there are four underlying reasons of the impression management: to legitimize during volatile periods for PFI public policy, to alleviate concerns, to make the policy credible and to legitimize the private firms’ involvement in PFI.…”

“…Drawing from the annual report narratives of the UK private sector private finance initiative (PFI) companies, Edgar et al (2018) contend that there are four underlying reasons of the impression management: to legitimize during volatile periods for PFI public policy, to alleviate concerns, to make the policy credible and to legitimize the private firms’ involvement in PFI. Similarly, Li and Haque (2019) illustrate how Taiwanese electronic manufacturing service providers deliberately use the rhetorical form of impression management both in published and in spoken employee-oriented corporate narratives to obscure the employee incidents and maintain their legitimacy. While these studies are important to understand the close link between the impression management tactics and legitimation process of the firm, they lack to explore one critical element in corporate narratives – gender disclosures.…”

“…While illustrating the legitimation through communication strategies alias impression management, the extant evidence largely depends on linguistic analysis of corporate communication. Researchers have used several approaches for linguistic analysis: linguistic hedging (Li and Haque, 2019), persuasion (Nwagbara and Belal, 2019), intertextuality (Lupu and Sandu, 2017) and critical discourse analysis (Nwagbara and Belal, 2019). However, some studies directly refer to the impression management theory (for example, the Goffmanesque frame used in Solomon et al , 2013).…”