 CEO statements in sustainability reports: Substantive information or background noise?Ralf Barkemeyer, Breeda Comyns, Frank Figge () and Giulio Napolitano Accounting forum, 2014, vol. 38, issue 4, 241-257 Abstract: This paper examines the question of whether corporate sustainability reports can serve as accurate and fair representations of corporate sustainability performance. It presents the results of a sentiment analysis of CEO statements in corporate sustainability reports and corporate financial reports between 2001 and 2010. Making an analogy with corporate financial reporting it is expected that if corporate sustainability reports accurately reflect sustainability performance, then this should be reflected in the rhetoric used. The analysis shows that the rhetoric in the CEO statements of sustainability reports is indicative of impression management rather than accountability, despite increasing standardization of sustainability reporting. Keywords: Sustainability reporting; Sentiment analysis; Sustainability performance; CEO statements; Accountability theory; Legitimacy theory; Impression management (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:accfor:v:38:y:2014:i:4:p:241-257 DOI: 10.1016/j.accfor.2014.07.002 Access Statistics for this article Accounting forum is currently edited by Glen Lehman More articles in Accounting forum from Elsevier |
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