Discursive construction of the sustainability and stakeholder concepts : a corpus-based analysis of the best practice integrated reports

The present study investigates the discursive construction of the powerful, yet vague,
concepts of sustainability and stakeholder (as compared to shareholder) in a sample of
105 best practice integrated reports, produced in the period from 2013 to 2018, in order
to explore the dominant representations and prevalent understandings of these concepts
in integrated reporting and in the wider corporate context. In this way, this research
uncovers the collective corporate mentality on and the corporate attitude towards the
natural environment and broader stakeholder groups, including society at large.
Informed by the premises of critical discourse analysis, this study adopts the linguistic
analytical categories of collocation and transitivity, and the data is analysed through
corpus linguistics methods and tools. The findings recall the critical claims and concerns
in the relevant literature. In brief, the concept of sustainability is constructed primarily as
organisational continuation and growth within integrated reports. The stakeholder is
prevalently represented as an inconsequential and inept identity to be managed, and
symbolically involved (e.g., symbolic engagement, symbolic accountability).
Additionally, stakeholder seems to be a conveniently made-up identity. In contrast,
shareholders are represented as a capable, powerful and authoritative group, controlling
the businesses, and holding the business organisations accountable.
Shedding light upon the institutionalised (and contemporary) corporate mentality,
regarding these significant concepts, is an important contribution to the existing body of
knowledge in accounting literature, as it is this mentality that conditions the efficiency
and effectiveness of integrated reporting as well as any other social and environmental
accounting development. At the analytical level, this research is interdisciplinary in
nature, applying (and introducing) novel (in accounting research) theoretical and
methodological approaches, from linguistics and corpus linguistics fields. It also responds
to research calls made to integrate linguistic insights into the body of accounting research
focusing on discourse.