Stance constructions in CEO statements of CSR reports of Chinese and US companies

Abstract

CEO statements from CSR (corporate social responsibility) reports serve as an important channel to promote the positive image of a company. It is critical for CEOs to take a positive stance to address the company's strategy to stakeholders. This paper examines grammatical stance constructions that US and Chinese Global Fortune 500 companies employed for establishing a responsible image in CEO statements. Based on 50 US and 50 Chinese CEO statements, the present paper investigates how CEOs use attitudinal, epistemic, and modality stance constructions to introduce their strategies for social responsibility. The findings of the study show that US CEO statements use significantly more attitudinal and epistemic stance constructions than Chinese CEO statements, indicating an affective stance taken by US CEOs. In addition, Chinese CEOs employ stance strategies focusing more on the companies' competence of environmental protection and self-improvement that conforms to the government policy. By contrast, US CEOs tend to actively present CSR participation in a wider range of social benevolence activities. The present study thus contributes to the increasing scholarly attention to CSR as well as to the understanding of different institutional practice across cultures. The study also provides implications for teaching and learning business writing and communication.