Exploring CEO messages in sustainability management reports: Applying sentiment mining and sustainability balanced scorecard methods

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to apply a combination of sentiment mining techniques and a sustainability balanced scorecard to CEO messages in sustainability management reports to predict corporate financial ratios. We classify the contents of CEO messages into the six perspectives suggested by the sustainability balanced scorecard (SBSC). From the sentiment mining results, we first document that positive words dominate CEO messages in sustainability management reports. Moreover, words related to the sustainability perspective do not generally exhibit a significant relationship with financial ratios. This finding indicates that CEOs' messages in sustainability management reports seemingly fail to properly represent the firms' current financial status. Therefore, the results indicate that a stronger supervisory standard may be required to induce CEO disclosures that are more responsible for sustainable management reports.