Search results

1 – 10 of over 19000
Article
Publication date: 20 March 2017

Ioana Lupu and Raluca Sandu

Despite the growing amount of research on the social and organizational role of legitimacy, very little is known about the subtle discursive processes through which organizational…

1498

Abstract

Purpose

Despite the growing amount of research on the social and organizational role of legitimacy, very little is known about the subtle discursive processes through which organizational changes are legitimated in contemporary society. The purpose of this paper is to explore the subtle processes of interdiscursivity and intertextuality through which an organization constructs a sense of legitimacy.

Design/methodology/approach

Drawing on the case of a newly privatized oil company in a transitional, post-communist economy, the authors’ research uses critical discourse analysis to analyze the annual reports, corporate press releases, and relevant media from the four years following privatization.

Findings

The authors argue for a relational understanding of legitimacy construction that emphasizes how legitimacy relies on the multiple processes of intertextuality linking corporate narratives and media texts. Corporate narratives are not produced solely by the discourses that occur at the individual and organizational levels; they are also produced by the much broader discourses that occur at the societal level.

Originality/value

This study’s main contribution is that it reveals the intertextual and interdiscursive construction of corporate narratives, which is a key element in understanding how discourses around privatization are interlinked and draw upon other macro-level discourses to construct legitimacy.

Details

Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, vol. 30 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0951-3574

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 16 May 2016

Ken McPhail and Carol A Adams

Drawing on Fairclough (1989, 2005), the purpose of this paper is to explore how respect for human rights is emerging and being operationalized in the discourse of 30 Fortune 500…

3256

Abstract

Purpose

Drawing on Fairclough (1989, 2005), the purpose of this paper is to explore how respect for human rights is emerging and being operationalized in the discourse of 30 Fortune 500 companies in the mining, pharmaceutical and chemical industries at two key points in the recent evolution of the UN’s business and human rights agenda. Specifically the paper explores the scope of rights for which corporations are accountable and, more specifically, the degree of responsibility a company assumes for enacting these rights.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors draw on Fairclough (1992) and Mashaw (2007) in a critical discourse analysis of corporate human rights disclosures of ten companies in each of the chemical, mining and pharmaceutical industries at two points in time coinciding with: first, the publication in 2008 of the Protect, Respect, Remedy policy framework; and second, the endorsement by the UN in 2011, of a set of Guiding Principles designed to implement this framework.

Findings

The study finds four grammars of respect and three different scopes of rights within specific corporate accountably disclosures on their responsibility to respect rights. Corporate constructions of human rights are broad: from labour rights, through social and political rights, to the right to health and a clean environment. The corporate discourse is one of promoting, realizing and upholding rights that construct the corporation as an autonomous source of power beyond the state.

Practical implications

The paper contends that the structuring of this emerging discourse is important, not only because the meaning and scope of corporate respect for rights affects the lived experience of some of the most vulnerable in society, but also because it reflects a shifting the relationship between the state, business and society (Muchlinski 2012).

Originality/value

The authors develop a way of conceptualizing business human rights responsibilities and contend that the corporate human rights discourse of respect reflects a significant reconfiguration of political power.

Details

Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, vol. 29 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0951-3574

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 11 June 2018

Michael Price, Charles Harvey, Mairi Maclean and David Campbell

The purpose of this paper is to answer two main research questions. First, the authors ask the degree to which the UK corporate governance code has changed in response to both…

3804

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to answer two main research questions. First, the authors ask the degree to which the UK corporate governance code has changed in response to both systemic perturbations and the subsequent enquiries established to recommend solutions to perceived shortcomings. Second, the authors ask how the solutions proposed in these landmark governance texts might be explained.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors take a critical discourse approach to develop and apply a discourse model of corporate governance reform. The authors draw together data on popular, corporate-political and technocratic discourses on corporate governance in the UK and analyse these data using content analysis and the historical discourse approach.

Findings

The UK corporate governance code has changed little despite periodic crises and the enquiries set up to investigate and make recommendation. Institutional stasis, the authors find, is the product of discourse capture and control by elite corporate actors aided by political allies who inhabit the same elite habitus. Review group members draw intertextually on prior technocratic discourse to create new canonical texts that bear the hallmarks of their predecessors. Light touch regulation by corporate insiders thus remains the UK approach.

Originality/value

This is one of the first applications of critical discourse analysis in the accounting literature and the first to have conducted a discursive analysis of corporate governance reports in the UK. The authors present an original model of discourse transitions to explain how systemic challenges are dissipated.

Details

Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, vol. 31 no. 5
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0951-3574

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 14 May 2019

Mohamed Chelli, Sylvain Durocher and Anne Fortin

The purpose of this paper is to longitudinally explore the symbolic and substantive ideological strategies located in ENGIE’s environmental discourse while considering the…

1090

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to longitudinally explore the symbolic and substantive ideological strategies located in ENGIE’s environmental discourse while considering the specific negative media context surrounding the company’s environmental activities.

Design/methodology/approach

Thompson’s (2007) and Eagleton’s (2007) theorizations are used to build an extended ideological framework to analyze ENGIE’s environmental talk from 2001 to 2015.

Findings

ENGIE drew extensively on a combination of symbolic and substantive ideological strategies in its annual and sustainability reports while ignoring several major issues raised in the press. Its substantive ideological mode of operation included actions for the environment, innovation, partnerships and educating stakeholders/staff, while its symbolic ideological mode of operation used issue identification, legal compliance, rationalization, stakeholders’ responsibilization and unification. Both ideological modes of operation worked synergistically to cast a positive light on ENGIE’s environmental activities, sustaining the ideology of a company that reconciles the irreconcilable despite negative press coverage.

Originality/value

This paper develops the notion of environmentally friendly ideology to analyze the environmental discourse of a polluting company. It is the first to use both Thompson’s and Eagleton’s ideological frameworks to make sense of corporate environmental discourse. Linking corporate discourse with media coverage, it further contributes to the burgeoning literature that interpretively distinguishes between symbolic and substantive ideological strategies by highlighting the company’s progressive shift from symbolic to more substantive disclosure.

Details

Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, vol. 32 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0951-3574

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 5 September 2020

Kumaran Rajandran

Financial communication produces various texts, among which are earnings videos. The videos employ language and image in multimodal discourses to convey specific social meanings…

Abstract

Purpose

Financial communication produces various texts, among which are earnings videos. The videos employ language and image in multimodal discourses to convey specific social meanings about corporate performance. The purpose of this paper is to select earnings videos and study their incorporated genres, styles and discourses.

Design/methodology/approach

Interdiscursivity permits hybridity because it mixes the choice of genres, styles or discourses. An interdiscursive analysis is conducted on earnings videos in English, French and Spanish from corporations in the global finance industry. It involved three sequential stages: (1) to detect the discourses, (2) to name the discourses and (3) to consider the function of the discourses.

Findings

Earnings videos are hybrid because interview and presentation genres, formal and casual styles and the discourses of financial accounting, strategic management and public relations are encountered. The genres, styles and discourses are interwoven to create an interdiscursive mix, which constructs earnings through a (pseudo)personal social relation and easified discourses. The multimodal discourses convey robust corporate performance in an interim, and their use is symptomatic of marketization. Corporations may “market” their performance to seem like a worthwhile investment to persuade (potential) investors.

Originality/value

The paper enriches existing research in financial communication because it studies how multimodal discourses in earnings videos are tailored for marketization. The videos have not been analyzed, and their analysis complements earlier studies on other financial communication texts. The analysis examines discourses through language and image features, whose co-deployment conveys meaning about corporations.

Details

Corporate Communications: An International Journal, vol. 26 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1356-3289

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 14 August 2018

Cristiano Busco, Elena Giovannoni, Fabrizio Granà and Maria Federica Izzo

The purpose of this paper is to explore the enabling role of accounting and reporting practices as discourses about sustainability unfold inside organizations. In particular, the…

3232

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to explore the enabling role of accounting and reporting practices as discourses about sustainability unfold inside organizations. In particular, the authors investigate how managers attempt to connect the concept of “sustainability” to their specific experience, as they seek to make sustainability meaningful (i.e. filling it with unfolding meaning) through accounting and within particular discursive spaces.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors rely upon the case of LOGIC, a large international oil and gas company operating in more than 70 countries worldwide. The authors analyze the evolution of discourses concerning sustainability inside the company, as well as the changing accounting and reporting practices, with a particular focus on integrated reporting.

Findings

The authors show that accounting and reporting practices (such as integrated reporting within LOGIC) provide the conditions for “sustainability”—as a discursive concept—to become meaningful, while evolving themselves as they are attached to this concept. They do so by enabling individuals (the management team within LOGIC) to connect their diverse experiences and aspirations to the concept of sustainability. Rather than filling sustainability with stable meaning, the authors observed that individuals are attracted by the gaps left by accounting representations, leading to the development of new practices and unfolding meanings within specific discursive spaces.

Originality/value

Most of the literature on sustainability accounting and reporting practices concentrate on the need for these practices to mirror what companies do about sustainability. Differently, the authors add to the very few studies on “aspirational” reporting that have emphasized the enabling effects of the gap between what companies say and do about sustainability. The authors do so by demonstrating that accounting is “aspirational” not only because it stimulates corporate efforts toward an imaginary better future, but also because it attracts managers’ particular aspirations through its representational gap. The authors show that this gap enables meaningful connections between individuals (their particular experience and aspirations) and “sustainability,” bringing this concept into their specific discursive space and, thereby, leading to the emergence of new practices.

Details

Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, vol. 31 no. 8
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0951-3574

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 15 December 2023

Damion Waymer and Theon E. Hill

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to science communication literature by further highlighting the underexplored role of organizational and corporate perspectives in…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to science communication literature by further highlighting the underexplored role of organizational and corporate perspectives in science communication.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper takes the form of a conceptual article that uses two illustrative vignettes to highlight the power of corporate science communication.

Findings

The key argument is that corporate science communication is a compound ideology that results from merging the hegemonic corporate voice with the ultimate/god-term science (see the work of Kenneth Burke) to form a mega-ideological construct and discourse. Such communication can be so powerful that vulnerable publics and powerful advocates speaking on their behalf have little to no recourse to effectively challenge such discourse. While critiques of corporate science communication in practice are not new, what the authors offer is a possible explanation as to why such discourse is so powerful and hard to combat.

Originality/value

The value of this paper is in the degree to which it both sets an important applied research agenda for the field and fills a critical void in the science communication literature. This conceptual article, in the form of a critical analysis, fills the void by advocating for the inclusion of organizational perspectives in science communication research because of the great potential that organizations have, via science communication, to shape societal behavior and outcomes both positively and negatively. It also coins the terms “compound ideology” and “mega-ideology” to denote that while all ideologies are powerful, ideologies can operate in concert (compound) to change their meaning and effectiveness. By exposing the hegemonic power of corporate science communication, future researchers and practitioners can use these findings as a foundation to combat misinformation and disinformation campaigns wielded by big corporate science entities and the public relations firms often hired to carry out these campaigns.

Details

Journal of Communication Management, vol. ahead-of-print no. ahead-of-print
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1363-254X

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 15 November 2019

Uzoechi Nwagbara and Ataur Belal

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how language (choice) in CSR reports of leading oil companies in Nigeria is used to portray an image of “responsible organisation”.

2082

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how language (choice) in CSR reports of leading oil companies in Nigeria is used to portray an image of “responsible organisation”.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper draws insights from communication studies (persuasion theory) and critical discourse analysis (CDA) studies to discursively unpack all those subtle and visible, yet equally invisible, linguistic strategies (micro-level elements): wording (single words), phrases and chains of words (clauses/sentences). These linguistic strategies (micro-level elements) proxy organisational discourses (meso-level elements), which are reflective of wider social practices (macro-level elements). The authors base the investigation on CSR reports of six leading oil companies in Nigeria from 2009 to 2012.

Findings

The findings of this study reveal that (leading) Nigerian oil companies linguistically use CSR reports to persuasively construct and portray the image of “responsible organisation” in the eyes of wider stakeholders (the communities) despite serious criticism of their corporate (ir) responsibility.

Originality/value

As opposed to the previous content analysis based studies, this paper contributes to the emerging stream of CDA studies on CSR reporting by providing a finer-grained linguistic analytical schema couched in Fairclough’s (2003) approach to CDA (and persuasion theory). This helps to unravel how persuasive language/discourse of responsible organisation is enacted and reproduced. The authors thus respond to the calls for theoretical plurality in CSR reporting research by introducing persuasion theory from communication studies literature which has hitherto been rarely applied.

Details

Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, vol. 32 no. 8
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0951-3574

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 25 February 2014

Denise Franca Barros, Joao Felipe Rammelt Sauerbronn and Alessandra Mello da Costa

This paper seeks to explore corporate social responsibility (CSR) in Brazil through the “evolution” of the sustainability concept in one of the country's leading specialist…

Abstract

Purpose

This paper seeks to explore corporate social responsibility (CSR) in Brazil through the “evolution” of the sustainability concept in one of the country's leading specialist business publications – the Exame Magazine. The idea is to understand how Exame portrays sustainable development and corporate sustainability in its Sustainable Corporation Guide.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors collected material covering five years of the Exame Sustainable Corporation Guide, from 2005 to 2009. The data were analyzed using discourse analysis.

Findings

The authors consider that the “evolution” promoted in this particular business media discourse on CSR and sustainability assumes, and stands for the economically dominant paradigm. In this sense, it cannot be viewed as an alternative that can realistically protect local environments. Despite the idea of a neutral journalistic approach, the concerns depicted in the publication still rely on profits and the chase for business opportunities. The authors also discuss to what extent this particular publication supports a specific hegemonic discourse. The different sustainability indexes adopted only reproduce practices that are desired and that align with the realities of the so-called developed nations.

Research limitations/implications

The paper focuses on what kind of sustainability discourse is propagated by the business media, and more specifically, by a well-known Guide published by a popular Brazilian business magazine. Through this method of diffusion, a specific kind of CSR and sustainability are drawn up that support the capitalist business model. This analysis can raise issues, such as the existence of a “dark side” of sustainability. Further investigation of the diffusion of the CSR and sustainability relationship in business media discourse, as well as of the uncritical adoption of western CSR models, might invigorate the discussion and provide valuable insights.

Originality/value

There is a distinct lack of studies on sustainability and CSR in emergent economies. Such initiatives can be developed in different ways because emergent countries' contexts may differ. Since Brazil is currently an important player in the economic and political arenas, understanding how the notion of sustainability is being discussed in the Brazilian business media can lead to important implications for corporate practices and organizational relationships with stakeholders, both internally as well as externally.

Details

Social Responsibility Journal, vol. 10 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1747-1117

Keywords

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 28 December 2020

Cristina Florio and Alice Francesca Sproviero

This study aims to explore how corporate discourses enact legitimation strategies aimed at repairing pragmatic, moral and cognitive legitimacy types (Suchman, 1995) after a…

3055

Abstract

Purpose

This study aims to explore how corporate discourses enact legitimation strategies aimed at repairing pragmatic, moral and cognitive legitimacy types (Suchman, 1995) after a scandal involving sustainability, namely, the Volkswagen’s 2015 diesel scandal.

Design/methodology/approach

By drawing on the discursive nature of legitimacy, this study conducts a critical discourse analysis to identify how the scandal is depicted and which semantic, grammatical and lexical features characterise discourses. It then relates discourses and their features to legitimation strategies that help repair diverse types of legitimacy.

Findings

To repair pragmatic legitimacy, discourses on a few actors and processes enact strategies of creating monitors and avoiding panic. Such discourses include grammatical features only. Discourses on the event, actors, processes and topics of apology, trust and integrity aim to repair moral legitimacy. Enriched with grammatical and lexical features, they mobilise disassociation, excuse, justify and restructure strategies. Discourses on the event, actors, processes and topics of corporate qualities, history and future strategy help repair cognitive legitimacy by enacting an avoiding panic strategy. Grammatical, lexical and semantic features characterise such discourses.

Research limitations/implications

The study reveals the potentials of critical discourse analysis to bring out from texts practical modes of communicating, and specifically those discourses and features of discourses that serve legitimacy purposes.

Originality/value

This study offers insights into the connection among discourses, relegitimation strategies and legitimacy types by combining the discursive nature of legitimacy with critical discourse analysis. It also contributes to the growing literature on how organisations face the legitimacy challenges raised by scandals involving sustainability.

Details

Meditari Accountancy Research, vol. 29 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2049-372X

Keywords

1 – 10 of over 19000