On the linkage between CEOs’ statements and CSR reporting: an analysis of visuals and verbal texts

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/CG-06-2020-0240
• Published date: 08 January 2021
• Date: 08 January 2021
• Pages: 515-535
• Subject Matter: Strategy,Corporate governance
• Author: Majid Khan,Rahizah Binti Sulaiman

On the linkage between CEOs’statements

and CSR reporting: an analysis of visuals

and verbal texts

Majid Khan and Rahizah Binti Sulaiman

Abstract

Purpose –Research on corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting highlightsan increasing lack of

transparency in the information reported along with concerns surrounding overall reporting practices.

One area that needs exploration is how chief executive officers(CEOs) convey messages in relation to

CSR. This paper aims to investigate the linkage between CEO’s statements (words and images) in

relationto CSR and the performativity of such communication.

Design/methodology/approach –The study analysed CEOs statements from five Malaysian

companiescontained in 2016, 2017 and 2018 standalone sustainabilityand annual reports. The texts and

visualsare analysed by using discourse analysis.

Findings –The findings uncoverthree main discourses (economic, environmentaland social) along with

other discourses(achievements and recognition and challenges).The texts and images are found to be

lackingin clarityand consistency and in many ways leave the stakeholders to make their own conclusions

about thereported information.

Originality/value –The research indicates that while the leaders can be more direct to their stakeholders,

however, the opportunity is not always capitalised. Overall, the analysis suggests an increasing scientism in

CEOs messaging in relation to CSR as a tool to enhance perceived accountability of the business. The study also

suggests avenues for improvement. This paper contributes to the emergence of different types of discourses

that are being upheld by CEOs in their statements on CSR in Malaysian context. The discourses identified

provide interesting insights into how CSR is perceived by the leaders.

Keywords CEOs statements, CSR reporting, Visuals and texts, Malaysia

Paper type Research paper

1. Introduction

Although the corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting is getting traction in recent years

(Khan et al., 2020a, 2020b), it continued to be seen as a contested field because of the

presence of fragmented theoretical and methodological approaches (Verk et al., 2019). Despite

the fragmentation, all these studies are focussed on making CSR reporting of organisations

honest and factual, both in intentions and actual practice. Nevertheless, we have recently

witnessed the emergence of standalone CSR or sustainability reporting in developed countries

like the USA (Mahoney et al., 2013), and this trend is slowly diffusing to the developing countries

(Hassan et al., 2020) where businesses use such initiatives to tackle their responsibilities

towards a wide array of stakeholders. One of the important components of an annual or

standalone sustainability reporting is CEOs’ statement (Sauerwald and Su, 2019); notably, it

personifies how a business communicates on personal level to the broader stakeholder group.

However, less is known about how chief executive officers (CEOs) portray a picture of CSR in

their reporting. CEO’s messages not only convey technical efficiency but also signal a business

stance towards CSR. This is because CEO personality traits such as hubris, greed,

Majid Khan is based at the

School of Management,

Massey University,

Palmerston North,

New Zealand.

Rahizah Binti Sulaiman is

based at the Faculty of

Business and Technology,

UNITAR International

University, Kuala Lumpur,

Malaysia.

Received 18 June 2020

Revised 1 November 2020

13 November 2020

Accepted 14 November 2020

DOI 10.1108/CG-06-2020-0240 VOL. 21 NO. 3 2021, pp. 515-535, ©Emerald Publishing Limited, ISSN 1472-0701 jCORPORATE GOVERNANCE jPAGE 515

overconfidence, narcissism and myopic behaviour can affect a business outlook for CSR

practice (Brennan and Conroy, 2013;Sajko et al., 2020). As a corollary, CEOs’ statements are

important avenue to amalgamate discourse on a business’ performance outcomes and CSR. It

is disconcerted that many organisations have chosen to report their CSR activities incomplete

and inconsistent disclosures (Cho et al., 2015;Higgins et al., 2020), whereas scholars conclude

that sustainability reports are increasingly used for legitimising purposes (Barkemeyer et al.,

2014). For instance, we observe that CEOs communicate a picture of equal opportunity and

gender diversity in their message but do not provide any details on how they are doing it. In

addition, this information is not consistent over the year of analysis.

Considering this background,we analyse the questions of what CEOs say in relation to CSR

in their messages (both texts and images) and how they say it. Furthermore, we highlight

the sustainability reports in detail to seethe consistency with CEOs statements. In doing so,

we use standalone CSR/sustainability reports and sustainability statements in annual

reports from five listed companies on Bursa Malaysia to document the different types of

discourses presented in CEOsmessages. We rely on discourse analysis of both visuals and

written texts to highlight whether the selected organisation report consistently in terms of

contents, media and strategies. A research among New Zealand companies reported that

there is an increase of photos to depict CSR activities in annual reports that suggest

companies are recognising the significance of photographic images as a visual CSR

communication medium (Chong et al., 2019). Hence, we explore the ways in which CEOs

use both texts and visuals to representtheir company as socially responsible.

This approach departs from the previous research that analyse CSR reports and CEO

messages empirically (Bacha and Ajina, 2019;Abd Mutalib et al., 2014), rhetorical analysis

(Higgins and Walker, 2012), qualitative content analysis (Higgins et al., 2020) and other linguistic

devices (Barkemeyer et al., 2014;Beauchamp and O’Connor, 2012), thus providing a different

lens in viewing their contents. In addition, we also demonstrate how the CEOs tend to adjust

their CSR-related messages in Malaysian context, as the understanding of CSR varies from

culture to culture (Mahfoudh et al., 2018;Khan et al., 2020a, 2020b). Therefore, contributing to

the emerging stream of research critical discourse analysis studies on CEOs messaging in

relation to CSR in annual reports. This not only helps in unravelling three major discourse carried

out in CEOs’ statements but also highlight how language and images are used to create an

image of responsible organisation is enacted and reproduced.

The rest of this paper is organised as follows. In Section 2, we discuss the related literature

on CSR reporting (both performative and constitutive perspectives) and link of CEOs

statements to broader sustainability reporting outlook. In Section 3, we provide a

description of data and the methods used for exploring the research question. In Section 4,

we provide our analysis and discussion. Finally in Section 5,we conclude with discussion of

findings and recommendationsfor future research avenues.

2. Prior literature

CSR reporting is omnipresent, and it has seen an upsurge in recent years (Luo et al.,2017;

Tschopp and Huefner, 2015). CSR reporting often refers to the incorporation of business

activities from a variety of stakeholders’ perspective. Broadly, diffused international

reporting standards such as Global Reporting Initiatives (GRI) and recently proposed

Integrated Reporting, among others demonstrated the importance of such reporting in

contemporary organisations. Overall, CSR reporting enhances organisational value, as

companies appear to be honest about the world in which they live (Rodrı

´guez and

LeMaster, 2007). However, researchin this tradition generally focusses on what businesses

claim in their reports may not actually reflect actual practice (Dick, 2015;Wickert

et al.,2016

). This is particularly manifestedas relationship between talking CSR and walking

CSR as found in the injunction walk the talk (Schoeneborn et al.,2020). According to this

viewpoint, the talk and walk of CSR must align.

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