A Contrastive Appraisal Analysis of the Chairman’s Statements in ICBC’s and Citigroup’s Corporate Social Responsibility Reports
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6822668Keywords:
Chairman’s statements, contrastive analysis, cultural differences, Appraisal system, Cultural Dimensions theoryAbstract
Corporate Social Responsibility Report (CSRR) has become an important medium for measuring corporate sustainability. Its opening part, the chairman’s statement, both informational and promotional, stands arguably to build and enhance a favorable corporate identity by the prominent adoption of appraisal resources. Given its common generic features, CSRR is linguistically culturally afforded. China’s initiation of green finance for the country’s green development against the background of carbon peak and carbon neutrality, especially since the two sessions in March 2021, would accelerate Chinese commercial banks’ conforming to the international reporting standards of CSRR. Against this background, the current study investigates the attitude resources in the chairman’s statements in CSRR of Chinese and western commercial banks from a culturally contrastive perspective, underpinned by Martin and White’s Appraisal system and Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions theory, taking Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC)’s and Citigroup as examples. It finds that copious attitude resources in distinctive patterns are adopted by the two different institutions, and the distinction mainly results from individualism and collectivism, power distance, masculinity and femininity, uncertainty avoidance and long-term versus short-term orientation. This study enriches the cultural contrastive study of CSRR on appraisal meaning. Suggestions on composition of chairman’s statements in CSRR has been offered.
References
Ahmed, I. (2020). Asia Bibi v. The State: The politics and jurisprudence of Pakistan’s blasphemy laws. Third World Quarterly, 42(2), 274–291. https://doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2020.1826300
Aloy Mayo, M., & Taboada, M. (2017). Evaluation in political discourse addressed to women: Appraisal analysis of Cosmopolitan’s online coverage of the 2014 US midterm elections. Discourse, Context and Media, 18, 40–48. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.DCM.2017.06.003
An, Y. (2021). Corporate social responsibility and overseas income. Finance Research Letters, 39, 101594. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.FRL.2020.101594
Bai, J., Ruan, Q., & Lu, X. (2016). Research on the impact of cultural differences on corporate social responsibility—A comparison of a U.S. company and a Vietnamese company (In Chinese, 文化差异对企业社会责任的影响——基于美国Verizon公司和越南VNPT集团的案例比较研究). Cross-Cultural Management (跨文化管理), (1), 137–153.
Basanta, A., & Vangehuchten, L. (2022). Sustainability reports of Chilean, Spanish and Mexican companies: a critical genre analysis. Círculo de Lingüística Aplicada a la Comunicación, 89, 201–219. https://doi.org/10.5209/clac.72902
Bernard, T. (2020). Corporate social responsibility in postcolonial contexts: A critical analysis of the representational features of South African corporate social responsibility reports. Critical Discourse Studies, 18(6), 619–636. https://doi.org/10.1080/17405904.2020.1798797
Bhatia, A. (2012). The corporate social responsibility report: The hybridization of a “confused” genre (2007-2011). IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, 55(3), 221–238. https://doi.org/10.1109/TPC.2012.2205732
Bondi, M. (2016). The future in reports: Prediction, commitment and legitimization in corporate social responsibility (CSR). Pragmatics and Society, 7(1), 57–81. https://doi.org/10.1075/ps.7.1.03bon
Chen, C. C., Khan, A., Hongsuchon, T., Ruangkanjanases, A., Chen, Y. T., Sivarak, O., & Chen, S. C. (2021). The role of corporate social responsibility and corporate image in times of crisis: The mediating role of customer trust. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 18(16), 8275. https://doi.org/10.3390/IJERPH18168275
Chen, P. (2018). A comparative study on engagement resources in American and Chinese CSR reports. English Language Teaching, 11(11), 122–135.
Colleoni, E., Romenti, S., Valentini, C., Badham, M., Choi, S. I., Kim, S., & Jin, Y. (2022). Does culture matter? Measuring cross-country perceptions of CSR communication campaigns about COVID-19. Sustainability, 14(2), 889. https://doi.org/10.3390/SU14020889
Dai, D. (2008). Intercultural communication theories. Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press.
Du, S., & Yu, K. (2021). Do corporate social responsibility reports convey value relevant information? Evidence from report readability and tone. Journal of Business Ethics, 172(2), 253–274. https://doi.org/10.1007/S10551-020-04496-3/TABLES/9
Fuoli, M. (2012). Assessing social responsibility: A quantitative analysis of appraisal in BP’s and IKEA’s social reports. Discourse and Communication, 6(1), 55–81. https://doi.org/10.1177/1750481311427788
Fuoli, M. (2018). Building a trustworthy corporate identity: A corpus-based analysis of stance in annual and corporate social responsibility reports. Applied Linguistics, 39(6), 846–885. https://doi.org/10.1093/APPLIN/AMW058
Gao, J., Hartmann, F. G. H., Zhang, M., & Chen, Y. (2022). The impact of CSR performance and CSR disclosure readability on investors’ earnings estimates. Accounting and Finance. https://doi.org/10.1111/ACFI.12938
Hofstede, G. (2005). Culture and organizations: Software of mind. McGraw-Hill.
Hofstede, G. (2008). Culture’s consequences: Comparing values, behaviors, institutions and organizations across nations (2nd ed.). Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press.
Huan, C., Deng, M., & Sritrakarn, N. (2021). The Bangkok Blast as a finger-pointing blame game. Journal of Language and Politics, 20(4), 493–514. https://doi.org/10.1075/JLP.20014.HUA
Hunston, S., & Thompson, G. (2000). Evaluation in text: Authorial stance and the construction of discourse. Oxford University Press.
Korner, K. (2000). Negotiating authority: The logogensis of dialogue in common law judgments. University of Sydney.
Laine, M. (2010). Towards sustaining the status quo: Business talk of sustainability in Finnish corporate disclosures 1987–2005. European Accounting Review, 19(2), 247–274. https://doi.org/10.1080/0969160x.2011.593841
Lin, C. Y., & Lau, K. (2021). “I found it very special and interesting”: Evaluative language in master’s thesis defenses in Taiwan universities. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 53, 101035.
Livesey, S. M., & Kearins, K. (2002). Transparent and caring corporations? A study of sustainability reports by the body shop and Royal Dutch/Shell. Organization and Environment, 15(3), 233–258. https://doi.org/10.1177/1086026602153001
Low, K. C. P. (2013). Confucian ethics. In S. O. Idowu, N. Capaldi, L. Zu, & A. D. Gupta (Eds.), Encyclopedia of corporate social responsibility (pp. 437–443). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-28036-8_594
Lu, X. (2020). On C-E translation strategies of banking corporate social responsibility reports from the perspective of translation variation theory. Guangdong University of Foreign Studies.
Macken-Horarik, M. (2003). Envoi: Intractable issues in appraisal analysis? Text & Talk - An Interdisciplinary Journal of Language, Discourse & Communication Studies, 23(2), 313–319.
Marchese, M., & Celerier, C. (2017). The representation of mental health sufferers in administrative and legal discourse. Discourse and Society, 28(1), 42–59. https://doi.org/10.1177/0957926516676702
Martin, J. R., & Rose, D. (2003). Working with discourse: Meaning beyond the clause. Continuum.
Martin, J. R., & White, P. R. R. (2005). The language of evaluation: Appraisal in English. Palgrave/Macmillan.
Milne, M., Tregidga, H., & Walton, S. (2003). Playing with magic lanterns: The New Zealand business council for sustainable development and corporate triple bottom line reporting stream. Proceedings of 4 APIRA Conference, 20.
Nwagbara, U., & Belal, A. (2019). Persuasive language of responsible organization? A critical discourse analysis of corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports of Nigerian oil companies. Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal, 32(8), 2395–2420. https://doi.org/10.1108/AAAJ-03-2016-2485
Oteíza, T. (2020). Mapuche People: Valuing a colonial past in the official primary history textbook from an intermodal perspective of historical sources. Journal of Foreign Language, 44(1), 41–63.
Peng, X. (2011). Reconstruction of the history of western literary criticism: A comprehensive view of the aesthetic standpoint based on the Appraisal category (In Chinese, 西方文学批评史重构——以评价范畴为依据的审美立场综观). Journal of Beijing Normal University (Social Science Edition) (北京师范大学学报(社会科学版)), (4), 69–81.
Pounds, G. (2010). Attitude and subjectivity in Italian and British hard-news reporting: The construction of a culture-specific “reporter” voice. Discourse Studies, 12(1), 106–137. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461445609346777
Pounds, G. (2011). “This property offers much character and charm”: Evaluation in the discourse of online property advertising. Text and Talk, 31(2), 195–220. https://doi.org/10.1515/TEXT.2011.009
Pucheta-Martínez, M. C., & Gallego-Álvarez, I. (2020). Corporate environmental disclosure practices in different national contexts: The influence of cultural dimensions. Organization and Environment, 33(4), 597–623. https://doi.org/10.1177/1086026619860263
How do primary school English textbooks teach moral values? A critical discourse analysis. Studies in Educational Evaluation, 70, 101044. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.STUEDUC.2021.101044
Sheldon, O. (1924). The philosophy of management. Routledge.
Smeuninx, N., De Clerck, B., & Aerts, W. (2020). Measuring the readability of sustainability reports: A corpus-based analysis through Standard Formulae and NLP. International Journal of Business Communication, 57(1), 52–85. https://doi.org/10.1177/2329488416675456
Susan, H. (2011). Is the meaning of genre important? A study of the introduction of academic papers under different genres (In Chinese, 语类的意义重要吗?——不同流派背景下学术论文引言部分的研究). Journal of University of Science and Technology in Beijing (Social Sciences Edition) (北京科技大学学报(社会科学版)), 27(2), 8–16.
Tehrani, M., Rathgeber, A., Fulton, L., & Schmutz, B. (2021). Sustainability & CSR: The relationship with Hofstede cultural dimensions. Sustainability, 13(21), 12052. https://doi.org/10.3390/SU132112052
Wang, B., Cheng, C., Du, Y., & Dong, Z. (2022). Thoughts and key tasks of green finance reform in the 14th Five-Year Plan period in China (In Chinese, “十四五”时期绿色金融的改革思路与重点任务). Environmental Protection (环境保护), 50(5), 45–48.
Wang, Y. (2022). Correlation between context and language at a high delicate level: Taking Chinese emotion as an example. Text and Talk. https://doi.org/10.1515/TEXT-2020-0113
White, P. R. R. (1998). Telling media tales: The news story as rhetoric. University of Peter Sydney.
White, P. R. R. (2020). Textual anticipation and the putative reader in persuasive discourse. Journal of Foreign Language, 44(1), 2–20.
Xia, R., & Xu, J. (2020). An eco-discourse analysis of corporate social responsibility: A systemic functional linguistics perspective (In Chinese, 基于系统功能语言学的企业社会责任生态话语分析). Foreign Languages in China (中国外语), 17(4), 33–42.
Xia, S. (2021). Development opportunities, challenges, and path selection of green finance in the fourteenth Five-year Period (In Chinese, “十四五”时期绿色金融的发展机遇、挑战及路径选择). Modern Finance Guide (现代金融导刊), (5), 12–16.
Ye, T., Xiang, X., Ge, X., & Yang, K. (2022). Research on green finance and green development based eco-efficiency and spatial econometric analysis. Sustainability, 14(5), 2825. https://doi.org/10.3390/SU14052825
Yu, D. (2020). Corporate environmentalism: A critical metaphor analysis of Chinese, American, and Italian corporate social responsibility reports. IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, 63(3), 244–258. https://doi.org/10.1109/TPC.2020.3012728
Zhang, X. (2021). A comparative study of the metadiscourse in CEO’s message in CSR reports of Chinese and American airlines. Guangdong University of Foreign Studies.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2022 Journal of Asia-Pacific and European Business
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
