A Corpus-Based Comparison of the Chief Executive Officer Statements in Annual Reports and Corporate Social Responsibility Reports

Abstract

This study presents a corpus-based comparison of the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) statements between annual reports and corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports. Using a corpus of 209 CEO statements from annual reports and CSR reports of Chinese companies, this study employs the Discourse-Historical Approach of critical discourse analysis to investigate the nomination strategies and key topics in these two related reports. The results showed that corporate leaders tend to have different priorities in annual reports and CSR reports. In annual reports, corporate leaders highlight the economic and pragmatic concerns of stakeholders to create a professionally capable and objective corporate image. In CSR reports, corporate leaders highlight the ethical concerns of stakeholders to create a socially responsible corporate image and adopt a more engaging and affiliative voice through the use of first-person pronouns. This study has significance in understanding the differences in the related genres of annual reports and CSR reports for the stakeholders.