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The purpose of this paper is to investigate: how dimensions of tone vary across different forms of corporate accountability narrative; the impact of tone on readability; and the determinants of tone, including consideration of its use in impression management.

Using a multi-year sample of listed companies, the authors measure dimensions of tone across multiple narrative types within the annual report and standalone corporate social responsibility report. Statistical analysis is used to investigate variations of tone across narrative type, each dimension’s influence on readability and the role of antecedent factors.

Analysis reveals that dimensions of tone vary significantly across narrative types (genres) suggesting that tonal patterns form part of the specific stylistic conventions of each genre. Tone is found to be a significant determinant of readability. Little evidence of obfuscation using tone was found, while disclosure type is the most salient determinant of tone.

The study illuminates latent or underlying disclosure norms that can facilitate the identification of “exceptional” cases that do not conform with expected tonal patterns of a particular narrative type and may warrant closer inspection by preparers, auditors or regulators. The issues raised regarding the clarity and balance of textual disclosures highlight the challenges in regulating corporate narratives.

This study highlights that tone is a more nuanced and layered concept than suggested by much of the prior literature. Further, tone ought to be considered in studies examining textual complexity.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the complex and shifting relationship between the Anglo American Corporation (Anglo) and the South African State (“the State”) as reflected in Anglo’s annual reports.

This paper builds on research on the role of annual reports in ideological conflict. To examine the ongoing relationship between Anglo and the State, the authors read all the annual reports published by Anglo American from 1917 to 1975, looking for instances in which the corporation appeared to be attempting to address, criticise, compliment, or implore the State.

During the period under study, despite the apparent struggles between the South African State and Anglo American, the relationship between the two was primarily symbiotic. The symbolic confrontation engaged in by these two behemoths perpetuated the real, physical violence perpetrated on the oppressed workers. By appearing to be a liberal opponent of apartheid, Anglo was able to ensure continued investment in South Africa.

The examination of decades’ worth of annual reports provides an example of how these supposedly neutral instruments were used to contest and sustain power. Thereby, Anglo could continue to exploit workers, reap enormous profits, and maintain a fiction of opposition to the oppressive State. The State also benefited from its support of Anglo, which provided a plurality of tax revenue and economic expansion during the period.

This paper provides insights into the ways the State and other institutions sustain each other in the pursuit of economic and political power in the face of visible and widely condemned injustices. Although they frequently contested each other’s primacy, both benefited while black South African miners suffered.

The readability of annual reports is an important feature that determines the quality of communication between a firm and its stakeholders. Extant literature has demonstrated that readability characteristics of annual reports are crucial in facilitating the investor's ability to process and analyze information, resulting in higher firm performance and lower agency costs. This study examines the relationship between annual report readability, agency costs and the firm performance of listed financial sector companies in Oman.

Using a sample of 150 firm-year observations of listed financial sector companies on the Muscat Securities Market (MSM) over the period 2014 to 2018, a panel regression analysis is used, along with the system generalized method of moments (GMM) estimation to address endogeneity concerns. The readability of annual reports is proxied by the length of the annual report, the Flesch reading ease and the Flesch–Kincaid index.

The ordinary least squares (OLS) results suggest that readability proxied by the length of the annual report has no significant relationship with agency cost, return on assets (ROA) or stock returns. The OLS results are confirmed through the system GMM estimation model for agency costs, Tobin's Q and stock returns. Easier-to-read annual reports measured by the Flesch reading ease demonstrate high asset utilization ratio and Tobin's Q. These results emphasize Flesch reading ease measure in explaining the economic significance of agency cost and Tobin's Q. In contrast, difficult-to-read annual reports are observed for firms with high ROA.

The study is limited to the financial sector. Its generalizability could be extended to a similar sector or countries with features similar to Oman. Future studies on readability could be extended to other sectors of Oman, and financial firms with easier-to-read annual reports show a high Tobin's Q, which reflects the confidence of investors in the stock market. These findings may encourage policymakers to regulate the readability features of annual reports and influence the reporting quality of financials and disclosures also including cross-country comparisons.

Financial firms with easier-to-read annual reports show a high Tobin's Q, which reflects the confidence of investors in the stock market. These findings may encourage policymakers to regulate the readability features of annual reports and influence the reporting quality of financials and disclosures.

While the study extends prior literature on readability, agency costs and firm performance, it is also one of the first to examine the financial sector of an emerging country, namely, Oman. The study supports the obfuscation hypothesis through the association of readability measure with agency cost. Unlike prior research that has focused on common computational linguistic literature, this study uses three proxies for readability to assess information quality.

This study aims to investigate how New Zealand companies use Twitter to communicate and engage effectively with stakeholders during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This study proposes a conceptual framework for effective stakeholder engagement by using social media to analyse the themes and emotion of company tweets during the COVID-19 pandemic in New Zealand. The engagement of stakeholders with these tweets is also examined. This study argues that companies use selected themes and emotive language to connect with their stakeholders.

The findings show that selective themes and emotions are useful in company COVID-19 tweets to engage with the stakeholders. COVID-19 tweets contained significantly more emotion than non-COVID tweets, with emotions that can convey empathy being the most common. By presenting themselves as real, personable and empathetic towards others through emotive language, companies can engage in more meaningful and ethical way with their stakeholders.

The paper has implications for managing company communications by providing empirical evidence that both the themes and emotion expressed in the messages are important for effective stakeholder engagement in social media.

The conceptual framework for effective stakeholder engagement using social media is novel and can be used to evaluate and investigate stakeholder engagement during a global crisis.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the current discussions about the concept of Integrated Reporting (IR) and provides a practical and useful proposal of an instrument that could help to apply the IR concept in corporate practice.

The study uses a deductive normative research approach.

Based on a comprehensive review of international literature and research, the paper argues that a structured presentation of the traditional measure of “value added” in a so-called “value added statement” (VAS) has the potential to serve as a practical and effective reporting instrument for IR. The proposed VAS not only meets the guiding principles of IR but also reports on the monetary effects of different types of capital included in IR and in this way complements and represents the concept of IR very well.

The authors intend to stimulate the academic as well as institutional discussion on how to apply the concept of IR at the corporate level. As the characteristics of the proposed VAS comply well with the guiding principles and concepts developed in the Integrated Reporting Framework project of the International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC) and with the ultimate objective of integrated thinking, the study can inform the current considerations within and outside of the IIRC.

The future of IR and the probability of its world-wide application in practice will depend on the development of appropriate reporting tools that incorporate the central ideas of IR, currently no such reporting tools exist. In this paper the authors make an argument for a VAS as a complementing, useful and therefore appropriate reporting tool for IR.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the environmental disclosure practices of firms engaged in environmentally sensitive industries by examining their association with environmental performance.

The study tests for associations between environmental performance and the level and nature of environmental disclosures by listed Chinese firms operating in industries that have been identified by a regulator as environmentally sensitive. The level of environmental disclosure is measured using a disclosure index based on the global reporting initiative. The nature of environmental disclosure is measured as the ratio of hard to total disclosure items.

Firms with more favourable environmental performance provide a higher level of environmental disclosure and include a greater proportion of hard disclosure items. However, the overall level of disclosure is lower than that observed in developed countries.

Due to data constraints, the proxy for environmental performance is based on the receipt and maintenance of environmental titles and awards and does not capture variation in the level of environmental performance of firms with no titles or awards.

As China continues to embrace market-based economic reform, the ability to reflect sustainable choices through market transactions is of increasing importance to the preservation of economic, natural and social capital for future generations.

The study examines the relation between environmental reporting and environmental performance by firms operating in industries that have been identified by a regulator as environmentally sensitive.

The study aims to identify and discuss influential aspects of corporate environmental disclosure (CED) literature, including key streams, themes, authors, keywords, journals, affiliations and countries. This review also constructs agendas for future CED research.

Using a bibliometric review approach, the authors reviewed 560 articles on CED from 215 journals published between 1982 and 2020.

The authors' insights are three-fold. First, the authors identified three core streams of CED research: “legitimization of environmental hazards via environmental disclosures,” “the role of environmental accounting in achieving corporate environmental sustainability” and “integrating environmental social and governance (ESG) reporting into the global reporting initiatives (GRI) guidelines”. Second, the authors also deployed a thematic map that classifies CED research into four themes: niche themes (e.g. institutional theory and environmental management system), motor themes (e.g. stakeholder engagement), emerging/declining themes (e.g. legitimacy theory) and basic/transversal themes (e.g. voluntary CED, environmental reporting and corporate social responsibility). Third, the authors highlighted important CED authors, keywords, journals, articles, affiliations and countries.

This study assists researchers, journal editors and consultants in the corporate sector to comprehensively understand various dimensions of CED research and practices and suggests potential emerging research areas. Although this paper appears to have been thoroughly conducted, using authors' keywords to identify themes was a key limitation. Thus, the authors call upon using a more comprehensive data mining technique that uses keywords in abstracts, titles and the whole body of papers and then identifies inclusive trends in CED literature.

The authors contribute to the extant accounting literature by investigating the organizational-level CED, both mandatory and voluntary, using a systematic and bibliometric literature review model to summarize the key research streams, themes, authors, journals, affiliations and countries. By doing so, the authors construct a future research agenda for CED literature.