A CEO with many messages: Comparing the ideological representations provided by different corporate reports

Abstract

This study analyzes how corporate reporting can be used to reinforce particular worldviews in the ongoing discursive debate over sustainability. The use of language is compared in CEO letters from two types of disclosures: the annual and sustainability reports of two Finnish companies during 2000–2009. The analysis is based on Thompson’s (1990) schema regarding the modes of ideology. Significant differences are noted; the CEO letters in the annual reports prominently use the economic discourse of growth and profitability, but they rely on the ‘well-being’ discourse in the sustainability reports. Despite the difference in discourse, by using different forms of ideological strategies, both types of disclosure serve the dominant social paradigm. The findings presented in this study highlight the need to further develop corporate sustainability reporting practices.

Keywords:

• Corporate disclosure
• Sustainability reporting
• CEO letters
• Discourse
• Ideology

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful for the constructive comments provided on earlier versions of the paper by the two anonymous reviewers and the whole editorial team. They would also like to thank Virginia Mattila and the Accounting Forum language editing services for the help with the English language. Financial support provided by the Finnish Foundation of Economic Education, the Finnish Cultural Foundation, the Finnish Work Environment Fund and the Marcus Wallenberg’s Foundation for Business Studies is also is gratefully acknowledged.

Notes

1 We are aware of the varying and often confusing uses of these concepts. However, for the sake of simplicity, we will from now on only use ‘sustainability’ to refer to all environmental, corporate-responsibility and sustainability issues.

2 For more on the relationship between hegemony and ideology, see Eagleton (1991, pp. 112–117).

3 Outokumpu and Rautaruukki publish their reports both in Finnish and in English. The present study is based on the English versions, and all of the citations included in this paper have been taken directly from the reports.

4 At a preliminary stage, we analyzed the CEO letters of five Finnish companies. However, a more concise dataset was eventually chosen to facilitate a closer reading of the dataset.

5 In qualitative research, it is often fairly complex to precisely describe the processes through which the interpretations have been formed. In this particular case, we feel that the data sessions played a major role. We proceeded systematically year by year and made notes of the conversation. However, the process was not linear. Resultantly, certain aspects and viewpoints appeared constantly in the letters and were, hence, bypassed more swiftly as the analysis progressed. In addition to these data sessions, the interpretations have been discussed less systematically on other occasions throughout the process.

6 The phenomenon with perhaps the most far-reaching impacts in the long term is probably climate change. The European Emission Trading System was established and further developed during the period we examine. Carbon trading might have far-reaching impacts for the metals industry, and this also emerges to some extent in the CEO letters we investigate, even though the actual impacts of carbon trading were still relatively minor at these early stages of emission trading (see Lovell, de Aguiar, Bebbington, & Larrinaga-Gonzalez, 2010).

7 Both companies actually had very good equity ratios (over 50%) at the end of the period in 2009, following the trend of the industry as a whole.

8 Outokumpu did reorganize its operations in 2001 to focus on stainless steel and, through a series of mergers and acquisitions, almost doubled its capacity and personnel. To further strengthen the strategy to focus on stainless steel, the company sold off its fabricated copper-products business in 2005, a decision that more than halved the number of employees. Around this time, Rautaruukki also refocused on being a metal-solutions provider.

9 For brevity, in the quotations we use abbreviations AR for the annual reports and SR for the sustainability reports.

10 ‘An average person’ without accounting education is normally unaware of the fact that the profit/loss figure is not an absolute truth about the financial success of the company (see also Craig and Amernic, 2004, p. 831; Hines, 1988).

11 See Choudhury (1988) and Hines (1988) for the significance of omissions and silences.

12 The natural environment will be discussed in more detail below.

13 Carbon trading receives some attention in annual reports in the later years of the period, albeit not because of its environmental background but rather because of the increased costs it appears to cause.

14 For instance, the formation of the International Integrated Reporting Committee by GRI and the Prince’s Accounting for Sustainability Project in 2010.