PERTANIKA JOURNAL OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES

Publishing sustainability reports has been mandatory in most countries, including Malaysia, where all publicly listed companies must disclose their sustainability activities since 2007, as gazetted in the Bursa Malaysia Listing Requirements, Ministry of Finance 2006. In addition, a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) framework was established to report corporate sustainability initiatives to include four focal areas: Environment, Workplace, Community, and Marketplace. Based on critical genre analysis, this article examines the discursive practices in disclosing these reports published by one plantation company by identifying the reports’ generic structure and reporting style. The results show that the disclosure complies with the Listing Requirements, and the discourse employs modern rhetoric, a form of subtle persuasion supported with facts and figures. Therefore, it can be concluded that these sustainability reports are more than just paying lip service.

• Avelsson, M., & Karreman, D. (2000). Taking the linguistic turn in organizational research challenges, responses, consequences. The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 36(2), 136-158. https://doi.org/10.1177/0021886300362002

• 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

• Bhatia, A. (2013). International genre, local flavour: Analysis of PetroChina’s corporate and social responsibility report. Revista Signos, 46(83), 307-331. https://doi.org/10.4067/S0718-09342013000300002

• Bhatia, V. K. (2008). Towards critical genre analysis. In V. K. Bhatia, J. Flowerdew & R. Jones (Eds.), Advances in discourse studies (pp. 166-77). Routledge.

• Bhatia, V. K. (2010). Interdiscursivity in professional communication. Discourse & Communication, 21(1), 32-50. https://doi.org/10.1177/1750481309351208

• Bursa Malaysia. (2006). Listing requirements of Bursa Malaysia Securities Berhad. https://www.bursamalaysia.com/sites/5bb54be15f36ca0af339077a/content_entry5ce3b50239fba2627b2864be/5ce3b6ca5b711a155e9506d7/files/listing_requirement_main_market_archives_0506.pdf?1570701419

• Catenaccio, P. (2011). Social and environmental reports: A short-term diachronic perspective on an emerging genre. In G. Garzone & M. Gotti (Eds.), Discourse, Communication and the Enterprise: Genres and Trends (pp. 169-192). Peter Lang.

• Chek, I. T., Mohamad, Z. Z., Yunus, J., & Norwani, N. M. (2013) Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) disclosure in consumer products and plantation industry in Malaysia. American Journal of Contemporary Research, 3(5), 118-125.

• Crawley, S., & Hawhee, D. (1994). Ancient rhetorics for contemporary students. Allyn & Bacon.

• Cyphert, D. (2021). From product to process: The rhetoric of sustainability and evolving management practice. Business and Professional Communication Quarterly, 84(3), 1-24. https://doi.org/10.1177/2329490620987835

• Darus, F., Che Ku Hamzah, E. A., & Yusoff, H. (2013). CSR web reporting: The influence of ownership structure and mimetic isomorphism. Procedia Economics and Finance, 7, 236-242. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2212-5671(13)00240-2

• Fuoli, M. (2012). Assessing social responsibility: A quantitative analysis of appraisal in BP’s and IKEA’s social reports. Discourse & 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

• Global Reporting Initiative. (n.d.). About GRI. https://www.globalreporting.org/about-gri/

• Greenwood, M., Jack, G., & Haylock, B. (2018). Toward a methodology for analyzing visual rhetoric in corporate reports. Organizational Research Methods, 1-30. https://doi.org/10.1177/1094428118765942

• Higgins, C., & Coffey, B. (2016). Improving how sustainability reports drive change: A critical discourse analysis. Journal of Cleaner Production, 136, 18-29. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2016.01.101

• Hynes, G. E. (2009). Annual reports: A tool for businesses, investors, and educators. Journal of Organizational Behavior Education, 2, 81-96.

• Ingram, R. W., & Frazier, K. B. (1983). Narrative disclosures in annual reports. Journal of Business Research, 11(1), 49-60. https://doi.org/10.1016/0148-2963(83)90038-3

• Karreman, J., De Jong, M., & Hofmans, S. (2014). The effects of different parts of the annual report on potential investors’ attitudes towards the company and on the corporate reputation. IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, 57(2), 78-97. https://doi.org/10.1109/TPC.2014.2311872

• Khaveh, A., Nikhashemi, S., Yousefi, A., & Haque, A. (2012). Voluntary sustainability disclosure, revenue and shareholders wealth – a perspective from Singaporean companies. Business Management Dynamics, 1(9), 6-12.

• Kress, G. (2010). Multimodality. A social semiotic approach to contemporary communication. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203970034

• Lai, A., & Stacchezzini, R. (2021). Organisational and professional challenges amid the evolution of Sustainability reporting: A theoretical framework and an agenda for future research. Meditari Accountancy Research, 29(3), 405-429. https://doi.org/10.1108/MEDAR-02-2021-1199

• Lestari, I., Hamzah, N., & Maelah, R. (2019). Corporate social and environmental strategy and reporting in Indonesian plantation industry. Indonesian Journal of Sustainability Accounting and Management, 3(1), 84-94. https://doi.org/10.28992/ijsam.v3i1.80

• Lin, Y. (2020). Communicating and bad news in corporate social responsibility reporting: A genre-based analysis of Chinese companies. Discourse and Communication, 14(1), 22-43. https://doi.org/10.1177/1750481319876770

• Loh, L., Thao, N. T. P., Sim, I., Thomas, T., & Yu, W. (2016). Sustainability reporting in ASEAN. State of progress in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand 2015. Centre for Governance, Institutions and Organisations (CGIO), National University of Singapore.

• Nwagbara, U., & Belal, A. (2019) Persuasive language of responsible organisation? A critical discourse analysis of corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports of Nigerian oil companies. Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, 32(8), 2395-2420. https://doi.org/10.1108/AAAJ-03-2016-2485

• Qian, W., Tilt, C., & Belal, A. (2021). Social and environmental accounting in developing countries: Contextual challenges and insights. Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal, 34(5), 1021-1050. https://doi.org/10.1108/AAAJ-03-2021-5172

• Rajandran, K. (2015). A critical discourse analysis of Malaysian corporate social responsibility reports [Doctoral thesis, University of Malaya]. http://studentsrepo.um.edu.my/id/eprint/5776

• Rajandran, K., & Taib, F. (2014). The representation of CSR in Malaysian CEO statements: A critical discourse analysis. Corporate Communications: An International Journal, 19(3), 303-317. https://doi.org/10.1108/CCIJ-02-2013-0011

• Saleh, M. (2009). Corporate social responsibility disclosure in an emerging market: A longitudinal analysis approach. International Business Research, 2(1), 131-141. https://doi.org/10.5539/ibr.v2n1p131

• Sun, Y., Jin, G., Yang, Y., & Zhao, Z. (2018). Metaphor use in Chinese and American CSR reports. IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, 61(3), 295-310. https://doi.org/10.1109/TPC.2018.2826759

• Unerman, J., Bebbington, J., & O’dwyer, B. (2018). Corporate reporting and accounting for externalities. Accounting and Business Research, 48(5), 497-522. https://doi.org/10.1080/00014788.2018.1470155

• Van Der Ploeg, L., & Vanclay, F. (2013). Credible claim or corporate spin?: A checklist to evaluate corporate sustainability reports. Journal of Environmental Assessment Policy and Management, 15(3), 21-44. https://doi.org/10.1142/S1464333213500129

• Wiseman, J. (1982). An evaluation of environmental disclosures made in corporate annual reports. Accounting, Organizations and Society, 7(1), 53-63. https://doi.org/10.1016/0361-3682(82)90025-3

• Yu, D., & Bondi, M. (2017). The generic structure of CSR reports in Italian, Chinese, and English: A corpus-based analysis. IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, 60(3), 273-291. https://doi.org/10.1109/TPC.2017.2702040

• Yusoff, H., Darus, F., Zain, M. M., Sawani, Y., & Janggu, T. (2019). Environmental risk disclosure practice in Malaysia: An emphasis on the plantation industry. Management & Accounting Review, 18(1), 117-137. http:// doi.org/10.24191/mar.v18i1.703