CONCLUSION
In these times of lost stakeholder trust, company executives that ‘walk the talk’ or look beyond the traditional measure of economic success to incorporate a responsibility mind-set that truly adheres to the triple bottom line concept reap long-term business benefits. Clearly, the collapse of Enron and the tarnished VW brand are few examples that show that unethical business practices become unmasked in the course of time, with damaging effects that are enduring. In the light of this, we contend that corporate social and environmental disclosure of TNCs merit thoughtful consideration. Untruthful or misleading CSR claims only have short-term results. Overall, our chapter demonstrates that firm, country and global level factors are important considerations in CSR discourses, and these have useful implications for researchers to be mindful of transporting Western concepts and models in developing country contexts and vice versa. Our proposed linguistic framework further has implications for CSR communication theory and practice. The framework does not only provide a lens for managers, companies, rating agencies and other stakeholders to ascertain the fit between social/environmental claims and actual actions, it is also a useful starting point for researchers to build upon to help improve companies’ communications about CSR. In general our empirical illustration revealed linguistic categories related more to responsibilities that focused on ethos than logos, and by presenting arguments this way, companies’ CSR messages are highly perceived as being credible (Ihlen, 2011). At the same time, one may also argue that, from critical and stakeholder skepticism perspectives, emphasising too much ethos actions may be perceived as covering up lapses, which means that logos strategies could be the most preferred by companies in their effort to gain credibility. Obviously, the study has some limitations which provide avenues for further research.
