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This paper aims to use a grounded theory approach to reveal that corporate private disclosure content has structure and this is critical in making “invisible” intangibles in corporate value creation visible to capital market participants.

A grounded theory approach is used to develop novel empirical patterns concerning the nature of corporate disclosure content in the form of narrative. This is further developed using literature of value creation and of narrative.

Structure to content is based on common underlying value creation and narrative structures, and the use of similar categories of corporate intangibles in corporate disclosure cases. It is also based on common change or response qualities of the value creation story as well as persistence in telling the core value creation story. The disclosure is a source of information per se and also creates an informed context for capital market participants to interpret the meaning of new events in a more informed way.

These insights into the structure of private disclosure content are different to the views of relevant information content implied in public disclosure means such as in financial reports or in the demands of stock exchanges for “material” or price sensitive information. They are also different to conventional academic concepts of (capital market) value relevance.

This analysis further develops the grounded theory insights into disclosure content and could help improve new disclosure guidance by regulators.

The insights create many new opportunities for developing theory and enhancing public disclosure content. The paper illustrates this potential by exploring new ways of measuring the value relevance of this novel form of contextual information and associated benchmarks. This connects value creation narrative to a conventional value relevance view and could stimulate new types of market event studies.

This case study is informed by a call for new ways to analyse the enactment of organisational culture using discourse analysis and researcher reflexivity. The colliding research approaches used in this paper open up cultural symbolic data for analysis in ways that allow participants to reflect on their own organisational experiences. The methodology that is employed examines corporate culture narrative from a multifaceted viewpoint to show ways in which organisations seek to maintain their structure and identity in the marketplace. The study draws on narrative and performance methods to show how perceptions about organisational reality can be reinterpreted and communicated in the context of corporate cultural identity and enterprise risk management.

The paper examines how oil multinational companies (MNCs) in Nigeria framed accounts to dissociate themselves from causing oil spills.

The authors utilised data from relevant corporate reports, external accounts and interviews, and used sensegiving with defensive behaviours theoretical framing to explore corporate narratives aimed at altering stakeholders' perceptions.

The corporations gave sense to their audience by invoking scapegoating blame avoidance narrative in attributing the cause of most oil spills in Nigeria to outsiders (sabotage), despite potentially misclassifying the sabotage-corrosion dichotomy. Corporate stance was reinforced through justifying narrative, which suggested that multi-stakeholders jointly determined the causes of oil spills, thus portraying corporate accounts as transparent, credible and objective.

The socio-political dynamics in an empirical setting affect corporate accounts and how those accounts appear persuasive, implying that such contextual factors merit consideration when evaluating corporate accounts. For example, despite contradictions in corporate accounts, corporate attribution of oil spills to external factors appeared persuasive due to the inherently complicated socio-political dynamics.

With compensation to oil spills' victims only legally permitted for non-sabotage-induced spills alongside the burden of proof on the victims, the MNCs are incentivised to attribute most oil spills to sabotage. On policy implication, accountability would be best served when the MNCs are tasked both with the burden of proof and a responsibility to demonstrate their transparency in preventing oil spills, including those caused by sabotage.

Crisis situations generate multiple and competing perspectives, but sensegiving and defensive behaviours lenses enrich our understanding of how crisis-ridden companies frame narratives to alter stakeholders' perceptions. Accounts-giving therefore partly satisfies accountability demands, and acts as sensegiving signals aimed at reframing/redefining existing perceptions.

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.

Corporate identity has become one of the major topics in the field of corporate marketing studies, but the relationship between corporate marketing management and corporate‐identity building seems still stuck at the stage of operational rather than strategic considerations. Corporate identity is understood largely in terms of instrumentality for enhancing competitive advantage, and corporate marketing is mostly discussed as only an execution part in representing corporate identity to the stakeholders. To address this issue, the purpose of this paper is to propose a model which explicates the strategic roles the corporate marketing manager plays in building effective corporate identity.

The paper explores strategic management of the corporate‐identity construction process and marketing communication management of corporate‐identity representation from the perspectives of sociology, organisational psychology and corporate marketing communication, primarily based on the narrative paradigm. Detailed theoretical exploration, coupled with several conceptual propositions as well as analyses of exemplary cases, provides academic and practical implications for corporate marketing researchers and managers.

The proposed model conceptualises that the corporate marketing manager assumes three strategic roles for building effective corporate identity: narrative coordinator to manage the narrative construction process, narrative‐network weaver to manage the narrative network, and narrative co‐author to manage the external communication programmes. These roles define the strategic relationship between corporate marketing management and corporate‐identity building.

The paper contributes to furthering the understanding of how to use the narrative paradigm for effective corporate‐identity building, which may help enhancement of business performance.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the determinants of future‐oriented information in UK annual report narrative sections. The paper also investigates the association between corporate dividend policy and levels of future‐oriented information, as a proxy for information asymmetry.

A computer‐based‐content analysis is used to measure levels of future‐oriented information. Tobit and logit regressions are then applied in order to examine the impact of firm characteristics, and corporate governance characteristics on future‐oriented disclosure. In further tests, Tobit and logit regression models are used to investigate the association between corporate dividend policy and levels of future‐oriented information.

The authors find that firm size is the main factor affecting the firms’ levels of future‐oriented information. This variable is statistically significant in five regression models. In addition, the authors find that profitability, outsider directorships, and insider ownerships affect the levels of future‐oriented information. However, the significance of these variables depends on whether fixed effects or random effects models are used and whether year dummies are included or excluded in the analyses. Finally, the authors find a positive association between corporate dividend policy and information asymmetry (measured by the levels of future‐oriented information).

This paper contributes to the existing disclosure studies in two crucial ways. First, it offers the first evidence that levels of future‐oriented information are driven by some firm characteristics, and some corporate governance mechanisms. Second, it offers the first UK evidence of the association between corporate dividend policy and information asymmetry. The results show that dividends and information asymmetry are negatively associated.

This paper aims to present theoretical and empirical foundations for the use of a particular type of narrative skillfully deployed by senior leaders in an organization as an effective tool for creating, disseminating and executing corporate strategy.

The paper presents original research on the effectiveness of the use of a “springboard story” as a leadership tool.

Data are presented to substantiate that a “springboard story” presentation of corporate strategy and competitive advantage is more effective at producing a consistent and confident choice of competitive advantage among an audience than a presentation of corporate strategy using a PowerPoint style, bulleted list approach. Theoretical implications for leaders leading change, especially change in corporate strategy, are suggested.

The paper explores the implications for the practical use of this type of narrative in strategy implementation and execution by leaders.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between narrative disclosures and corporate performance based on Australian evidence. In particular it builds a model which discriminates between good and poor performing companies based on their corporate narratives.

A sample of Australian manufacturing companies is classified into two groups based on earnings per share (EPS) movement between 2008 and 2009. A content analysis of their discretionary narrative disclosures is used to classify and predict group membership.

This study finds that the word‐based variables based on discretionary disclosures are significantly correlated with corporate performance. Word‐based variables can successfully classify companies between “good” performers and “poor” performers with an accuracy of 86 percent.

The relatively small sample size, for Australian manufacturing companies, limits both the predictive ability of the model and its generalisability elsewhere.

The findings of the paper demonstrate that certain keywords, notably the use of “high/highest” and “dividends” are significantly and positively associated with superior performance.

The study builds a classification model for continuing Australian companies, whereas prior research focuses on UK and US companies and is based on a healthy/failed distinction.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Prior accounting research views impression management predominantly though the lens of economics. Drawing on social psychology research, this paper seeks to provide a complementary perspective on corporate annual narrative reporting as characterised by conditions of “ex post accountability”. These give rise to impression management resulting from the managerial anticipation of the feedback effects of information and/or to managerial sense‐making by means of the retrospective framing of organisational outcomes.

A content analysis approach pioneered by psychology research is used, which is based on the psychological dimension of word use, to investigate the chairmen's statements of 93 UK listed companies.

Results suggest that firms do not use chairmen's statements to create an impression at variance with an overall reading of the annual report. It was found that negative organisational outcomes prompt managers to engage in retrospective sense‐making, rather than to present a public image of organisational performance inconsistent with the view internally held by management (self‐presentational dissimulation). Further, managers of large firms use chairmen's statements to portray an accurate (i.e. consistent with an overall reading of the annual report), albeit favourable, image of the firm and of organisational outcomes (i.e. impression management by means of enhancement).

The approach makes it possible to investigate three complementary scenarios of managerial corporate annual reporting behaviour: self‐presentational dissimulation, impression management by means of enhancement, and retrospective sense‐making.