基于批判性话语分析的企业社会责任报告研究 ——以三家在华外资企业为例

CHAPTER ONE   INTRODUCTION

1.1 Research Background

After the year of 2006, the first year of China’s CSR report, the development of CSR in China stepped into a new stage, receiving more and more attention, presenting the characteristic of whole-society  involvement  with  accelerating development.  Compared  with  western developed countries, the percentage of companies publishing CSR reports is much lower, and there  exist  such  problems  as  large  difference  in  length,  impertinent  content,  unclear  and incomplete information disclosing in the CSR reports of China.

Corporation’s  contribution  to  the  economic  and  technological  progress  of  society  is significant. However, in the process of bringing benefit and convenience to the public, these corporations  have  also  created  a  series  of  social problems.  Issues  such  as  pollution,  waste, product  safety,  the  rights  of  workers,  etc.  have  got  more  and  more attention  and  concern. Under this circumstance, companies have been increasingly urged to take more responsibility for its stakeholders,  including  the  shareholders,  creditors,  employees,  consumers,  the environment, the government and the society. As a matter of fact, public awareness in social and  environmental  issues  has  resulted  in  more  disclosures  of social  responsibility  from corporations in the few decades (Deegan, C. and Gordon, B., 1996). 

There  is  no  universal  definition  of  CSR  (Godfrey,  P.C.  and  Hatch,  N.W.,  2007),  most definitions  describe  CSR as  a  concept  that  companies  integrate  social  and  environmental responsibility  into  their  business  operations  and their  interaction  with  stakeholders  on  a voluntary  basis. 

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1.2 Rationale

This  research  has  both  theoretical  and  practical  significance.  On  the  one  hand,  as  a  kind  of narrative document and corporate (one-way) communication text, the ultimate aim of writing CSR  report  is  to  achieve  good information  communication  with  the  reader.  Therefore,  CSR report may adopt a certain type of move structure to present the corporation’s contribution in various  aspects  tonly  studies  the  discourse  structure, information  structure,  cohesion  and  coherence, discourse  type,  pragmatics,  text  grammar,  genre  theory,  speech act  theory,  and  conversation analysis,  etc  (Huang  Guowen  and  Xu  Jun,  2006).  Critical  Discourse  Analysis  is also  called Critical Linguistics, a subject of discourse analysis springing up firstly in Britain in the late 1970s.  CDA  is  an interdisciplinary  linguistic  subject  aimed  to  study  and  explain  social problems.  Through  analyzing  discourses’ linguistic  features  and  the  social  and  historical background  of their  generation,  it  investigates  the  ideological meaning  behind  the  language structure  and  then  reveals  the  complex  relations  among  language,  power  and ideology.  The social  science  sectors  involved  with  CDA  include  sociology,  politics,  communication, management and pedagogy, etc., playing an important guiding role in practice. Different from traditional  discourse  analysis  which neglects  the  social  attribute  of  discourse,  CDA  views language  as  a  kind  of  social  practice,  an  intervening  force of  social  process.  Language  not only reflects society but also directly participates in the construction of social issue and social relations. In addition to the question of what language is, CDA also studies why language is the way it is; it’s not only interested in the meaning of discourse itself, but also concerns the process that generates this meaning.  

Sapir-Wolf hypothesis believes that mind perceives external world through language. But language  is  not  a  transparent mediation,  it  may  distort  the  reality  and  then  influence  even control human mind, control human’s subjective experience to the real world. Language is more than a simple vehicle of human thoughts, but can also shape the thought. People with different  cultural  background  would  have  different  ways  of  thinking  and  different  language structure. Likewise,  people  speaking  different  languages  would  also  differ  in  their  ways  of thinking as well as culture, i.e., language structure influences human’s way of thinking.  

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2.2 Literature Review on CSR Reporting

2.2.1 CSR Disclosure and Firm Characteristics and External Influences

Since the late-1970s, CSR disclosing has been the focus of lots of researchers. Major strands regarding this aspect have attempted to uncover the connection between CSR disclosures and (a) social performance (Ingram, R. W. and Frazier, K. B, 1980; Freedman, M. and Wasley, C., 1990),  (b)  economic  performance  (Roberts,  1992),  and  (c)  firm characteristics  and  external influences (Cowen et al., 1987; Patten, 1991; Guthrie and Parker, 1989; Roberts, 1992). Since it is almost impossible to review all the researches in this domain by the scope of this study, the author only gives a brief introduction to several representative studies. 

Early  researches  on  the  association  between  CSR  disclosures  and  firm  characteristics and  external  influences found  that  firm  size,  industry  factor,  etc.,  are  associated  with  CSR disclosures (Cowen  et al., 1987). Cowen et al. (1987) found that corporate size was closely related  to  the  nature  of  corporate  disclosure.  And  media  and  the public  generally  demand more  CSR  information  from  large  companies  than  from  smaller  companies (Adrem,1999). And, in the early stage, the findings of studies of the association between corporation’s CSR disclosures and  its  financial  performance  could  be  simply  summarized  as  :  as  long  as  the corporation  is  able  to  prove that  fulfilling  CSR  could  help  them  get  financial  returns,  then CSR  could  get  supported  by  the  management (Wood  and  Jones,  1995).  Therefore,  most articles in CSR filed at that time were exploring the association between CSR disclosing and corporation’s  financial  performance.  Rufctal,  in  2001,  through  questionnaire  survey,  gave weights  to  the  content  of  CSR  disclosing  and  got  the  total  score  of  CSR  disclosing  by weighted average method, then he demonstrated the association between CSR disclosing and corporation’s financial performance with the approach of empirical analysis. Rufctal found that the change of CSR information having a positive correlation with that period’s financial performance  has  positive  influence  on  the  later  period’s  financial  performance.  This conclusion suggests that the improvement of CSR can facilitate the corporation’s short-term financial performance as well as long-term financial performance. 

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CHAPTER THREE THEORETICAL AND ANALYTICAL FRAMEWORK ............. 17

3.1 Fairclough’s Three Dimensional Framework of Discourse ........... 17

3.2 Bhatia’s Seven -Step Approach to the Genre Analysis............. 21

CHAPTER FOUR CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF CSR REPORTS  .................. 29

4.1 Generic Structure of The 3 CSR Reports (Micro-level Analysis) ........... 29

4.1.1 Communicative Purposes of CSR Reports ............... 31

4.1.2 Move Analysis of 3 CSR Reports ............... 31

CHAPTER FIVE CONCLUSION REMARKS ............... 51

5.1 Major Findings .......................... 51

5.2 Implication ........................... 52

CHAPTER FOUR   CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF CSR REPORTS

4.1 Generic Structure of The 3 CSR Reports (Micro-level Analysis)

These  three  CSR  reports  are  written  under  different  guidance,  of  which  China  Samsung follows the indexes of CASS-CSR while other 2 companies follow that of GRI. And an index sheet is attached behind the body of each report. From these index sheets, it can be seen that all  these  3  companies  have  basically  disclosed  the  relevant  content of  the  key  indexes  of CASS-CSR or GRI. And the general content of these 3 reports are rather similar with some discrepancies in the sequential organization of specific topics. Table 4.1 gives a summary of some basic information about these 3 CSR reports.

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CHAPTER FIVE   CONCLUSION REMARKS

5.1 Major Findings

1)  The  generic  structure  of  these  3  CSR  reports  can  be  typically  classified  into  7  moves, namely,   MoveⅠ “Identifying service”, Move Ⅱ “Giving a quick view of the report” , Move  Ⅲ  “Establishing  credentials”,  MoveⅣ “Summarizing  the  company’s  CSR management  system”,  MoveⅤ  “Reviewing  the  detailed  CSR  initiatives  related with different  stakeholders”,  Move  Ⅵ  “Providing  authentic  proof”,   Move  Ⅶ“Soliciting response”.

2)  All these moves occur in a logic sequence, with subtle differences in the specific choices of the sub-steps under each move, and some can be iterative under some conditions, for example, the step of “Presenting CSR results and external evaluation(awards)” can be appropriately  placed  in  MoveⅢ,  Move  Ⅳ  or  MoveⅤ  without  interrupting  the communicative effect of any move.

3)  The emphasis laid on each stakeholder is not the same. The first two priorities of these 3 CSR reports are the environment and community involvement, and customer/consumers and  employees  come  next,  with  government and  cooperative  partners  in  the  last  place. This trend may be related with leading positions of these 3 companies whose reputation and  brand  image  have  been  stably  established  in  the  industry  and  the  host  country,  so their focus  may  be  more  possibly  on  the  contribution  to  promoting  the  development  of the industry and the involvement in the resolution of significant issues highly valued by the state or that can result in big contribution to the development of the country, such as industrial innovation, technological innovation, educational innovation, etc. 

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