CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION

1.1 Research Topic

The  concept  of  corporate  social  responsibility  (hereinafter  referred  to  as  CSR)  was first introduced by Oliver Sheldon in 1924.

CSR policy basically means that businesses should embrace responsibility for the impact  of their activities on their communities, environment,  consumers,  employees, and all the other members of the public.

As  early  as  in  the  1930s,  renowned  economic  professors  Adolf  Berle  and  E. Merrick Dodd had already led a spirited debate on the issue of whether corporations should undertake social responsibilities.

In terms of issues such as the company's functionality and role, and of the trustee of  the  manager,  Berle  (1931) regarded  companies  as  sheer  for-profit  economic organizations in which all the corporate powers belonged to stockholders. By contrast, Dodd  (1932)  advocated  that  companies  should  embrace  social  responsibilities  since companies  were  greatly  influenced  by  public  interests  when  allocating  private properties.  Thus,  companies  should be  considered  organizations  endowed  with  both functions of seeking profits and serving society. The debate lasted for more than two decades and ended with Dodd's standpoint prevailing over Berle’s.

Thus, CSR policy has been conventional since its introduction.

By  the  late  1990s,  the  idea  of  CSR  had  become  almost  universally  sanctioned and  promoted  by  all constituents  in  society  from  governments  and  corporations  to non-governmental  organizations  and  individual consumers.  Most  of  the  major international  organizations  such  as  the United Nations,  World  Bank, Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development and International Labor Organization have not  only  endorsed  CSR,  but  also established  guidelines  and  permanently  staffed divisions to research and promote CSR.

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1.2 Definition of Corporate Social Responsibility

The issue of corporate social responsibility (CSR) has been debated since the 1950s. The  latest  analyses  by  Secchi  (2007)  and  Lee  (2008)  reported  that  the  definition  of CSR is  in a process  of change  in  meaning.  According to Berle, the classical  view of CSR  was  narrowly  limited  to  philanthropy  and  then  shifted  to  the  emphasis  on business-society relations, particularly referring to the contribution that a corporation or  firm  made  to  solving  social problems.  In  the  early  twentieth  century,  social performance  was  tied  up  with  market  performance.  The pioneer  of  this  view,  Oliver Sheldon  (2003),  however,  encouraged  management  to  take  the  initiative  in  raising both ethical standards and justice in society through the ethic of economizing, i.e.  to economize the use of resources under the name of efficient resource mobilization and usage. By doing so, a business creates wealth in society and provides better standards of living.

According  Wood  (1991),  the  present-day  corporate  social  responsibility  (CSR, also  called  corporate  conscience, corporate  citizenship,  social  performance,  or sustainable  responsible  business/  Responsible  Business)  is  a  form  of corporate self-regulation  integrated  into  a  business  model.  The  CSR  policy  functions  as  a built-in,  self-regulating mechanism  whereby  a  business  monitors  and  ensures  its active compliance with the spirit of the law, ethical standards, and international norms. CSR is a process with the aim to embrace responsibility for the company's actions and encourage  a  positive  impact  through  its  activities  on  the  environment,  consumers, employees, communities, stakeholders and all other members of the public who may also be considered as stakeholders.

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CHAPTER TWO LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 Previous Studies of Text Cohesion Carried out Overseas and in China

In  this  chapter,  the  author  will  review  some  of  the  previous  studies  on  cohesion carried out overseas and in China. It is Halliday and Hasan (1976) who first proposed cohesion  as  a  linguistic  term.  The  book  Cohesion  in English  (Halliday  and  Hasan, 1976)  written  by  them  not  only  arouses  wide  attention  to  cohesion  in  the  field of linguistics but also lays a theoretical foundation for the further study.

2.1.1 Studies of Text Cohesion Carried out Overseas

The earliest studies referred to or rather the first to be widely available were those of Quirk (1985), Greenhaum (1996) and Leech (2001).  Among such studies, Gutwinski (1976)  took  the  view  that  cohesion  could  be  considered  as  the relations  obtaining among  the  sentences  and  clauses  of  text,  and  he  also  tried  to  root  cohesion  in  a stratificational framework. His focus on the potential stylistic application of cohesive studies  has  provided  a  new perspective  for  studies  in  stylistics.  Fowler  (1977)  held that cohesion was a linguistic pattern helps to hang texts together. 

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2.2 Overview of Previous Studies on English Corporate Reports

In  the  following  the  author  of  the  thesis  paper  will  review  the  literature  of  the previous  studies  on  English corporate  reports  that  justifiably  cover  English  CSR reports. English corporate reports, as one of the most important ways to keep track of corporate  activities,  haven’t  received  much  attention.  Most  researches  on  English corporate reports were done by western scholars from various perspectives, from, for example, textual analysis, corpus linguistics-based approach, thematic analysis and so forth.

2.2.1 Previous Studies on English Corporate Reports  

Thomas (1993) studied “The Letter to Shareholders” by turning to Halliday’s systems of  transitivity,  thematic  structure, context  and  cohesion,  and  condensations,  and  she argued that writers always presented themselves in a favorable light.  In her research, Thomas examined the active and passive construction of the clauses in “The Letter to Shareholders” and the thematic structure therein. It was proposed in her research that the active clause construction occurred more frequently when  profitability increased. Moreover,  the  choice  of  agency  also  reflects  the  change  in profitability,  as  those writers  tended  to  associate  themselves  with  favorable  messages  rather  than  negative ones.   Smith  and  Taffler  (1996)  conducted  a  content  analysis  of  the  chairman’s statement, arguing that voluntary narrative disclosures could indicate financial risk of bankruptcy  and  that  the  chairman's  statement  was associated  with  subsequent corporate failure.

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CHAPTER THREE THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK ........... 17

3.1 About Text Cohesion ......................... 17

3.2 Cohesive Devices and Their Functions .......... 17

CHAPTER FOUR COHESION ANALYSIS ................... 25

4.1 Overview .................. 25

4.1.1 General Study: Data Analysis and Results .............. 26

CHAPTER FIVE CONCLUSION ................ 61

5.1 Major Findings ............... 61

5.2 Implications................. 63

CHAPTER FOUR COHESION ANALYSIS

4.1 Overview

All of the English CSR reports analyzed in the thesis paper are the ones appearing on the web pages of high-technology companies so that the corpus can be representative and  the  research  outcome  can  be  more  well-directed.  An entire  English  CSR  report, which is often more than 100 pages long, is too long to be analyzed in this thesis. For this reason, the author of the thesis chooses the part of an English CSR report that is closely  related  to  “people”  as research  text.  Generally  speaking,  an  English  CSR report consists of many parts such as “business”, “environment”, “public policy”, only the part of “people” focuses on the wellbeing of a company’s employees and their development which should  be  paid  attentions  to  insofar  as  the  responsibilities  a company  shoulders  are  meant  for.  Therefore,  the author  of  the  thesis  paper  has analyzed the “people” part of 30 English CSR reports of different  companies. The general data analysis and the case studies will be presented in the following.

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CHAPTER FIVE CONCLUSION

5.1 Major Findings

Cohesion is an important constituent of text analysis and it plays an important role in connecting  elements  in  the  text. On  the  basis  of  the  previously  relevant  studies concerning  cohesion,  the  author  of  this  thesis  has  carried  out a  research  on  the cohesion  of  the  CSR  reports  of  some  hi-tech  companies.  After  researches  on  the  30 corpus and the relevant studies, the author draws the following conclusions. 

The  occurrences  of  cohesive  devices  in  the  30  English  CSR  reports  are  not  of even  distribution.  Lexical cohesion  is  the  most  frequently  used  type  of  cohesion  by which  to  set  up  cohesive  relations  across sentences, followed  in  order  of  occurrence by  reference  and  conjunction.  Ellipsis  and  substitution  are  rarely  employed  in the reports  to  realize  textual  cohesion.  In  the  30  randomly  selected  English  CSR  reports there are 74 reference items, 6 instances of ellipsis, 40 occurrences of conjunction and 589 lexical cohesive items applied to build textual cohesion. Lexically cohesive items are  the  writers’  favorite  among  all  cohesive  devices.  Both  grammatical  and lexical types of cohesion contribute to the realization of cohesion in the English CSR reports. 

Specifically  speaking,  the  frequent  use  of  lexical  cohesion  makes  stand  out  the subject-matter or the central topic that the writers of the  English  CSR reports  would like  to  emphasize.  The  lexical  chains  formed  by  lexical reiteration and  collocation weave  in  and  out  of  the  whole  textual  cohesion. 

reference(omitted)