Abstract
Despite the proliferation of studies on corporate social responsibility (CSR), there is a lack of consensus and a cardinal methodological base for research on the quality of CSR communication. Over the decades, studies in this space have remained conflicting, unintegrated, and sometimes overlapping. Drawing on semiotics—a linguistic-based theoretical and analytical tool, our article explores an alternative perspective to evaluating the quality and reliability of sustainability reports. Our article advances CSR communication research by introducing a theoretical-cum-methodological perspective which provides unique insights into how to evaluate the quality of CSR communication. Particularly, we illustrate the application of our proposed methodology on selected U.K. FTSE 100 companies. Our two-phased analysis employed the Greimas Canonical Narrative Schema and the Semiotic Square of Veridiction in drawing meanings from selected sustainability/CSR reports. In addition, we present a distinctive CSR report quality model capable of guiding policy makers and firms in designing sustainability/CSR reporting standards.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 876-908 |
| Number of pages | 33 |
| Journal | Business and Society |
| Volume | 60 |
| Issue number | 4 |
| Early online date | 7 May 2019 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Apr 2021 |
Funding
We wish to specially thank Prof. Colin Higgins for his clear and constructive guidance throughout the review process. We are grateful to the two anonymous reviewers for their constructive and helpful suggestions on earlier versions of this article. Our work has also greatly benefited from constructive feedbacks from participants at the British Accounting and Finance Association (BAFA) annual conference held at the University of Bath in 2016; the 41st annual congress of the European Accounting Association (EAA) held in Milan, Italy, in May/June 2018; and the Academy of Management Annual Meeting, in Chicago, USA, in August 2018. The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Keywords
- CSR communication
- CSR reports
- Greimas’s narrative
- semiotics
- sustainability reports