Abstract

In corporate social responsibility reporting, companies are expected to fully disclose the negative social and environmental impacts of their activities. This study investigates how Chinese companies respond to this challenge by analyzing the representations of occupational fatalities and injuries in 92 CSR reports from 37 Chinese Fortune 500 companies. A move-step analysis was performed on one part of the CSR report, which is the section providing information on occupational incidents. It was found that the negative information was typically disclosed via four rhetorical moves, which are ‘preparing the reader’, ‘delivering the bad news’, ‘mitigating the bad news’ and ‘reassuring the reader’. Communicating bad news through the four moves helps manage the reader’s perception of the reporting company and its CSR performance. The study calls for greater attention to the impression-managing aspects of companies’ self-disclosure of organizational bad news.