CSR reporting after the financial crisis: Reconciling pro-sociality with profitability

Purpose: Our point of departure is the discretion companies have in their CSR reports to emphasize positive aspects of their CSR performance and downtone or omit negative events. We study this discretion in the specific context of CSR reporting by companies that are under a high-profile legal investigation for alleged mismanagement. These companies are in a situation where the very idea of transparency and accountability inherent in CSR reporting is at odds with the business logic of profitability. They face the dilemma of inflating a potential fine when acknowledging any responsibility for the alleged misdeeds in their CSR reports, but at the same time cannot not address this issue in their CSR reports, if these reports are to be of any value to their stakeholders. Design/methodology/approach: Adopting a discursive approach, we selected the case of large U.S. banks after the financial crisis to study how they handled this communicative challenge of needing to rebuild their legitimacy in their CSR reports while being under a high-profile criminal investigation. We combine the fields of organizational discourse with CSR communication in a cross-disciplinary study of CSR reports. This is a rare combination, as CSR communication has traditionally been based on quantitative, content-analytic analyses of CSR reports. Findings: The study shows how CSR reports do not just disseminate information about a company's social and environmental performance, but contribute to the definition of these very responsibilities towards stakeholders through positive identity claims, the discursive construction of relationships, and the discursive connection of the company with favorable events and the disconnection from unfavorable events. Originality/value: Our study is qualitative in nature and contributes to the relatively small, but growing stream of research that has adopted a discursive, constructivist approach to CSR communication. Specifically, our study contributes an understanding of how discourse strategies are used to define and redefine responsibilities in CSR reports, especially in times of legal uncertainties.