Communication of Accoutability and Positive Attitude

Abstract

Background and problem discussion: Recent accounting scandals have created greater demands on the information given from the companies to its stakeholders, which has resulted in stronger legislation. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 involves, among other things, that the companies are obliged to account for their internal control procedures and what risk factors they are exposed to in a report called Form 20-F. This leads to more communication that needs to be interpreted. The fact that the information can be interpreted in different ways by the users constitutes a problem for the companies. The choice of language and expressions could affect how the reader experiences the text. Purpose: The main purpose in this thesis is to investigate whether there are any differences in how the companies communicate accountability and positive attitude in the risk sections in the Form 20-F reports. Three Swedish companies have been selected for this study: Electrolux, Ericsson and Stena. Delimitations: The authors have chosen to limit the study to only one method of text analysis and three companies. Furthermore, the investigation only comprises the risk sections in the Form 20-F reports. The analysis is also limited to investigate the actual circumstances that could be gathered from the texts. The authors will not make any attempts to explain the reasons for these circumstances or eventual differences that may result from the survey. Method: The authors of this thesis have chosen to perform a text analysis of the risk sections in Form 20-F. Text analysis is a wide conception that contains several different methods of analysing text. Content analysis has been chosen for this study. Conclusions: Of the three studied companies, Ericsson is the one that distinguishes itself and communicates most accountability and positive attitude to its stakeholders. Electrolux communicates the least accountability while Stena’s results vary by test parameter. The study has shown that companies communicate accountability by the usage of personal pronouns and that positive attitude is mediated through the usage of positive words. The authors have further been able to conclude that differences in choices of words can result in differences in the receiver’s apprehension. Suggestions for further research: A proposal for further research is to perform a text analysis on the same texts that were studied but with different methods of text analysis. The results could thereafter be compared to those of this study and could hopefully lead to a more substantiated and accurate result.