Abstract

According to previous studies, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) reporting has grown increasingly in importance for companies in terms of portraying themselves as good corporate citizens. Therefore, this paper investigated how two multinationals corporations, The Coca-Cola Company and Microsoft, apply rhetoric in their CSR reports to create their good reputation and build their positive corporation images. Five distinct rhetorical strategies for describing the purpose of CSR were applied: Audience, Purpose, Ethos, Logos, Pathos. The findings revealed that very different rhetoric is applied. Both companies take advantage of rhetoric while organizing the CSR report. This paper indicated that the rhetoric employed in MNC’s CSR report is calculated operations used to appease the audience and encourage co-created trust in the brand.

Introduction

Definition of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)

The concept of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) was first coined in the book “The Philosophy of Management” by the American scholar Oliver Shelton. It refers to the responsibility of enterprises to improve the interests of the community while pursuing their profit (Hart & Scott, 1982). In 1953, the “Father of Corporate Social Responsibility” Bowen defined CSR in his book “Social Responsibility of Businessmen”. Bowen (1953) believed that businesses must “to pursue those policies, to make those decisions, or to follow those lines of action which are desirable in terms of the objectives and values of our society”. In general, CSR can be considered as a way for corporations to display ethics and a good image. It aims to combine the corporation’s own development with social trends, achieve synchronization between the two, and then reach the win-win results. CSR is one of the factors for enterprises to gain their “business license” from civil society, maintaining the long-term survival and prosperity (Ihlen, 2013).

CSR explores the interrelation and influence between corporations and social needs and social development. In the society, each group has its own unique social role and division of labor.

With the intensification of globalization, multinational corporations, as a powerful social group, are rapidly changing and expanding their role and influence among the world. Therefore, CSR standards and practices of multinational corporations are a vital part of a good and stable global society, which deserves our attention.

CSR of Multinational Corporations (MNCs)

With the deepening of economic globalization, MNCs are the main source of global economic development. The development momentum of MNCs continues to grow, and the development and operation of MNCs have exerted a significant influence on human society and the natural environment. For MNCs, the traditional pattern of the international market has changed, and demand for MNCs in addition to competitive advantage on cost and quality, to the enterprise’s reputation, contribution to environmental protection, production environment also requires a competitive advantage. These advantages must encourage MNCs to meet its corporate social responsibility. So far, CSR has mainly been a response to pressure from consumers, civil society, large enterprises and governments which have forced companies to become more environmentally and socially responsible due to environmental pollution, human rights abuses and exploitation of labor in supply chains. In the meantime, MNCs have realized the strategic importance of being further responsible (“Corporate Social Responsibility Of Multinational Companies”, 2018).

Many MNCs strive to achieve some social missions in order to do businesses ethically, minimize negative environmental impacts, raise public attention on certain issues, raise funds and donations, and more. Therefore, with the continuous deepening of the expansion of MNCs, the research on CSR of them is of great significance. The thesis will further demonstrate the significance of CSR and explore what companies have done to contribute to the world by analyzing the usage of rhetoric in their CSR.

Rhetoric in Corporate Social Responsibility

There is no universally accepted reason why MNCs should pursue social participation, but the majority of corporations clarify their purposes of CSR events by adopting different rhetorical strategies (Hummels, 2004). Rhetoric, as the art of communicating and persuading effectively, is used to convey these messages. MNCs apply certain rhetorical strategies in their CSR report as a tactic to reach specific communication purpose, such as enhancing credibility or legitimacy (Edelman, 2013).

In this paper, we will mainly analyze the rhetorical situation and three rhetorical appeals used in two MNCs’ CSR reports.

Logos: CSR reports distributed by MNCs are logos driven. To make CSR reports more persuasive, MNCs must list the facts of their real actions to enhance their CSR.

Ethos: CSR reports conveys a unique and powerful of commitment. For MNCs, ethical appealing

can be seen as the pursuit of excellence, success, and responsibility.

Pathos: MNCs always use abundant emotional words or pictures in their CSR reports to strike an emotional chord with anyone who wants to know about their CSR.

Audience: The audience includes a wide range of stakeholders, such as consumers, journalists, and critics. Each stakeholder group has different information needs.

Purpose: The purpose is to publicize what MNCs have truly done for the improvement of both human society and the environment.

This paper will particularly examine the role and implications of rhetoric within the contexts of CSR report and official CSR website of two famous multinational corporations: Coca-Cola, and Microsoft. This paper will mainly focus on the usage of rhetoric in the social and environmental CSR reports of these two corporations to find out how they achieve certain communication goals and to create a positive corporate image.

Case Study on Two MNCs CSR Reports

Case 1: The Coca-Cola Company

Operating in more than 200 countries and doling out more than 1.9 billion servings of Coke brand products a day, The Coca-Cola Company is a multinational corporation known for its beverages. It regards the CSR as part of its commitment to building sustainable communities and is at the heart of its business in every country (Coca-Cola-Business-and-Sustainability-Report, 2019).

The report we choose to analyze is “2018 Business & Sustainability Report” of The Coca-Cola Company. We mainly focus on two parts of this report: “Sustainable Agriculture” and “Caring for People and Communities”.

“Sustainable agriculture”.

Audience: The audience of this part includes many different types of stakeholders: agricultural investors, consumers, media, NGOs, and countries, regions, enterprises, specific groups that cooperate in the agricultural field. Each different stakeholder group has the ability to legalize the Coca-Cola company and contribute to the company’s corporate social responsibility.

Purpose: The first goal is to show the company’s conservation awareness by assuring its audience that these ingredients are produced in a way that respects farmworkers and communities. The report shows that the company has significantly improved driving and demonstrating sustainable agricultural practices, such as engage all farmers in the supply chain and support the development of the supply chain. The second purpose is to show their great concern about human rights issues. During 2018, Coca-Cola has conducted six studies of human rights issues, including child labor, forced labor and land rights, in countries from which its sources sugar. For example, they tried to provide better access to clean water and sanitation at a sugar mill in Mexico and participating in a multi-stakeholder convening on land rights in Malawi. The third purpose is to express their ideal goal of building a stable supply while promoting practices that improve people’s lives and livelihoods.

Ethos: The Coca-Cola Company does its best to showcase that they are an ethical and credible company. Delivering accurate and reliable details of Coca-Cola’s sustainable farming activities, demonstrating appropriate and sincere openness, and justifying any plans or decisions they make, is an attempt to build credibility and trust. According to Kohut and Segar (1992), the manner that a company convey the message in the corporate report is an essential aspect of its CSR construction, whereby credibility can be built by convincing audiences that the company is implementing the socially acceptable strategy and contributions. In addition, Coca-Cola tries to emphasize its positive results and company values. In the report, the application of positive words appears far more often than negative words. Furthermore, a large portion of the content describes “we aim to”, “future growth”, and “we expect exciting times in the following years” (Coca-Cola-Business-and-Sustainability-Report, 2019, p. 30). These cheerful forward-looking statements imply that the success of CSR activities in 2018 will continue for years to come, reinforcing trusting relations between stakeholders and the company.

Pathos: This part uses the color green, which is closer to the subject of “Sustainable Agriculture”. Also, green will convey a sense of security, environmental protection, vitality and refreshment. In addition to this, the big picture of smiling farmers will make the audience feel friendly and reliable. In the report, first-person pronouns like “we,” “our” and “us” are the most frequent words. Such words create a sense of unity throughout the company as well as engage the audience. By such application of pathos, viewers and all types of stakeholders can receive the feelings of belonging to The Coca-Cola company. If viewers identify with Coca-Cola, they can better recognize and be influenced by the company’s contribution to CSR.

Logos: In the “Sustainable Agriculture” section, The Coca-Cola Company provides viewers with factual information about their contribution to agriculture by highlighting data. For instance, the report emphasizes the increase in the proportion of its company whose ingredients have been certified for sustainable agriculture standards from 8% to 44% (Coca-Cola-Business-and-Sustainability-Report, 2019). Besides, The Coca-Cola Company has basically adopted a general-to-specific structure when describing each of its CSR activities, which is an embodiment of the successful use of logical appeals.

“Caring for people and communities”.

Audience: The audience of this part includes numerous stakeholders, bottling partners, suppliers, customers, consumers and the communities they serve. Also, consumers, media, NGOs, and countries, regions, enterprises, specific groups that focus on caring for human rights might be their intended audiences. Another type of audience is the employees of Coca-Cola company and other job seekers that are interested in this company, because “Employee Safety & Health” is also a big section of this part. Additionally, female customers, businesswomen and females who concern about realizing their own economic empowerment might be important intended audience of this report, as Coca-Cola explained that they have addressed specific barriers to business success that women entrepreneurs face. Each different type of audience can contribute to the company’s corporate social responsibility.

Purpose: The purpose of this part is to show that Coca-Cola has made great efforts in striving to have a positive impact on people extends to all the communities connected to their business. For example, they are committed to “upholding human rights across their operations and supply chain, empowering women, caring for their employees’ safety and health, or giving back to communities directly through their philanthropic initiatives” (Coca-Cola-Business-and-Sustainability-Report, 2019, p. 33).

Ethos: In order to create and maintain positive ideas of their overall corporate image through the effective management of their brand, Coca-Cola publicizes the accurate and reliable details of The Coca-Cola Company’s various activities about supporting human rights and gender-balanced entrepreneurship. and giving justification for any of their plans or decisions are all their attempts to build credibility and trust. Ethos used in CSR has offered several benefits to corporations including improved revenues, branding and reputation or image (Jeffers et al., 2014). Coca-Cola attempts to reap the potential benefits that can be generated by the public reporting of such social scripts through the annual creation of their CSR report. In addition, Coca-Cola tries to emphasize its positive results and company values. They compare their achievements between the past years and recent years to show the continuous progress they have accomplished. They use direct numbers and graphs to convince the public that they are doing good for both human and nature and they strive to be a world-class operator, a responsible corporate citizen and a good employer.

Pathos: The color purple is used in this part, which can express a sense of curiosity, power and inclusion. Also, Coca-Cola uses different photo of their activities to persuade the audience that they have done a lot for the good of society and nature. Using the real photos can strengthen the trustiness of audience.

Logos: The Coca-Cola Company divides this part into several sections: Supporting human Rights, Empowering Women, Employee Safety & Health, Diversity & Inclusion—Strengthening Our Business and Society and Supporting People and Communities. In each section, Coca-Cola provides with one representative project or activity that they organized to make a contribution to various fields, such as hosting “the 10th Human Rights Conference at our Corporate headquarters in September of 2018”, supporting “women entrepreneurs in the Philippines, promoting Coca-Cola Turkey operations to be recognized by the British Safety Council for their dedication to excellent health, safety and well-being” and so on (Coca-Cola-Business-and-Sustainability-Report, 2019, p. 34-36). Coca-Cola also adopts factual numbers and graphs to show their achievements, which can make its CSR to be legitimized by audience and make the audience more easily accept and trust their positive corporation image.

Case 2: Microsoft Corporation

As an American multinational technology corporation, it overtook Apple as the most valuable company in the world (Newcomb, 2018). Microsoft CSR is guided by its civic mission which is “to serve globally the needs of communities and fulfil our responsibilities to the public” (Microsoft 2019 Corporate Social Responsibility Report, 2019). The report we decide to analyze is “Microsoft 2019 Corporate Social Responsibility Report.” Considering the rhetorical aspects of this report, we mainly focus on its rhetorical situation and rhetorical appeals.

Audience: Different social groups consist of the audience of this Microsoft CSR report. They are consumers, employees, media, advocacy groups, industry experts, rating agencies, investors, NGOs, governments, etc. Each type of audience has its own information needs. Thus, this CSR report inserts many hyperlinks to provide more effective information for the groups that require them. The rhetoric mints MNCs like Microsoft to create and establish a good image of CSR among their audiences.

Purpose: The first purpose of this report is to demonstrate Microsoft’s commitment to human rights, environmental sustainability, and social development, ensuring that its stakeholders recognize and trust its CSR strategy and work with it further. In this vein, the CSR report “serves to reproduce understanding and acceptance of CSR” (Lammers & Barbour, 2006, p. 364), thereby, highlighting Microsoft’s outstanding efforts. In this report, the word “stakeholder” appears more than 30 times, emphasizing how Microsoft’s stakeholders help them to contribute their CSR. This reflects another purpose of the purpose, acknowledge the stakeholders.

Ethos: The report includes plenty of first-person pronouns such as “we” and “our”, helping foster ethos and establish the trustworthiness of the Microsoft Corporation. The rhetoric and language used in this CSR report is carefully selected with strategic purposes. It only comments on Microsoft’s positive contribution and performance towards human and environment but avoided discussions on the negative aspects. In this case, this report can establish the credibility more successfully. Besides, in the “2019 letter from our CEO”, the Microsoft CEO mentions the statement that “I am proud of how we are empowering everyone...with experiences to help them always feel confident, capable, and in control” (Nadella, 2019, p. 1). This sentence establishes Microsoft CEO’s ethos of leadership and shows how much the executive management cares and values the employees, customers, and all its stakeholders.

Pathos: In this report, the values rhetoric fits nicely into the exploration for Microsoft’s moral legitimacy, which aims to create passion and emotion to attract the audience, especially by employing appealing to pathos. In addition, Microsoft appeals to emotions through its adoption of images and emotional vocabularies. For example, the smiling woman who appears on the cover page of this report allows readers to feel a warm and trusting mood immediately after opening the report, instead of browsing the full report with apathy.

Logos: This report adopts logos through logical connectives, including “so”, “since” and “also” which appeal to the audience’s rationality to understand Microsoft’s position in a manner expected by the management. Besides, the large number of links inside the report directs the audience to pages that show audience more detailed and logical information, regarded as one way of appealing to logic. Furthermore, through the whole report, Microsoft integrates CSR in their slogans and missions first, then provides statistical and factual information about their CSR activities, proposes their future CSR plans, and finally points out their awards and certificates. Obviously, this Microsoft CSR report follows a rigorous and logical structure.

Discussion and Conclusion

Based on the analysis of The Coca-Cola Company and Microsoft Corporation, it is evident that multinational corporations perceive Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) to be a central issue and essential business tactic. In this paper, we examine the application and the positive effects of rhetoric in the CSR report. According to our research, CSR rhetoric is used to construct the reality of CSR plans and to strengthen stakeholders’ support.

Both in the “Coca Cola Business and Sustainability Report 2018” and “Microsoft 2019 Corporate Social Responsibility Report,” their frequent use of rhetorical features are consistent with Aristotle’s rhetorical appeals-logos, ethos, and pathos. Analyzing their intended audience and the main goal of their CSR report can help them better design and organize their report. For multinational corporations like The Coca-Cola Company and Microsoft Corporation, they apply logos while delivering the statistical information to confirm their logical clarification about their contribution towards CSR. Both two corporations adopt real pictures of their previous activities to strike an emotional appeal with their audience. Additionally, they both create a positive corporate image and enhance their CSR by presenting what they have done and what they will do in the future. They both make the utmost of rhetoric in their CSR report to better deliver better performance on the international stage. As for The Coca-Cola Company, its sustainable report is organized by suing color-coding, guiding the audience to grasp the different theme or topic in one section quickly. On the contrary, Microsoft Corporation applies another visual tool, hyperlink, to help their readers gain more detailed and specific-area information.

In today’s business world, more and more multinational corporations are looking for ways to contribute to social welfare while maintaining profitability. Most of them have been devoted to modifying their CSR by adopting different rhetorical strategies. In such a case, they can build a unique responsible corporate culture towards society and environment, as they realize such CSR contributions will benefit the long-term interests of the company, its employees and other key stakeholders. Furthermore, CSR rhetoric also provides those MNCs to ingrain a positive image and establish an excellent reputation in the public’s minds. Since more and more multinational corporations are taking their role as CSR contributors and guiders seriously, rhetoric, as a tool guiding them to communicate effectively towards the public, deserves more attention from researchers.

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