Abstract:
Among the most-read corporate documents are chief executive officers’ (CEOs’)
shareholder letters. Using institutional isomorphism as lens, this study examines the
extent to which the narrative styles used by South African CEOs in their shareholder
letters are similar to the styles used by CEOs at leading international companies. The
study also explores the degree to which impression management techniques are present
in the South African CEOs’ shareholder letters. The study uses DICTION software
to conduct a narrative analysis of South African CEOs’ shareholder letters for
a single financial year, and compares the findings with those drawn from the Craig
and Amernic (2018) study of the shareholder letters of CEOs from samples of international
Fortune 500 and FTSE 100 companies. The study finds that optimism and
realism are the two most-used narrative styles in South African CEOs’ shareholder
letters, and that these findings are markedly similar to those generated by the Craig
and Amernic (2018) study of international companies. The study contributes to the
understanding of normative institutional isomorphism in corporate reporting by providing
empirical evidence that the narrative styles employed by CEOs of companies
in a developing economy with high corporate governance standards conform to the
same norms as those of CEOs of large international companies. The study also finds
that the South African CEOs’ dominant communication styles in the shareholder letters lend themselves to being tools of impression management.
