Please cite this article in press as: Barkemeyer, R., et al. CEO statements in sustainability reports: Substantive information or background noise? Accounting Forum (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.accfor.2014.07.002 ARTICLE IN PRESS G Model ACCFOR-299; No. of Pages 17 Accounting Forum xxx (2014) xxx–xxx Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Accounting Forum jo u r n al homep age : www.elsevier.com/locate/accfor CEO statements in sustainability reports: Substantive information or background noise? Ralf Barkemeyer a,b,∗ , Breeda Comyns c,1 , Frank Figge c,2 , Giulio Napolitano d,3 a University of Leeds, School of Earth & Environment, Woodhouse Lane, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK b Kedge Business School (Bordeaux), 680 Cours de la Liberation, 33405 Talence Cedex, France c Kedge Business School, Domaine de Luminy – BP 921, 13288 Marseille Cedex 9, France d Queen’s University Belfast, UK, Centre for Statistical Science and Operational Research (CenSSOR), David Bates Building, University Road, Belfast BT7 1NN, Northern Ireland, UK a r t i c l e i n f o Article history: Received 2 July 2013 Received in revised form 18 March 2014 Accepted 6 July 2014 Available online xxx Keywords: Sustainability reporting Sentiment analysis Sustainability performance CEO statements Accountability theory Legitimacy theory Impression management a b s t r a c t This paper examines the question of whether corporate sustainability reports can serve as accurate and fair representations of corporate sustainability performance. It presents the results of a sentiment analysis of CEO statements in corporate sustainability reports and corporate financial reports between 2001 and 2010. Making an analogy with corporate financial reporting it is expected that if corporate sustainability reports accurately reflect sustainability performance, then this should be reflected in the rhetoric used. The analysis shows that the rhetoric in the CEO statements of sustainability reports is indicative of impression management rather than accountability, despite increasing standardization of sustainability reporting. © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Corporate sustainability reporting has increasingly emerged as standard practice, especially among large OECD-based companies (Kolk, 2004, 2008; KPMG, 2011). Today, corporate sustainability reports constitute one of the main communica- tion interfaces between these companies and their internal and external stakeholder groups. While corporate financial repor- ting is used by companies to communicate financial information, sustainability reporting is used to communicate on non- financial issues. Financial reports and sustainability reports are usually presented as separate standalone company reports. Various theoretical viewpoints have been employed in the sustainability reporting literature to explain underlying moti- vations for sustainability reporting. Accountability theory and in particular legitimacy theory have been widely adopted in this context (Brown & Deegan, 1998; Deegan, Rankin, & Tobin, 2002; Gray, 2001, 2007). Accountability and legitimacy theo- ries reflect fundamentally different perspectives on the aims and nature of sustainability reporting (Comyns, Figge, Hahn, & Barkemeyer, 2013). Accountability theory takes a societal view on reporting and supports the notion that the company has ∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +44 113 343 7485; fax: +44 113 343 5259. E-mail addresses: r.barkemeyer@leeds.ac.uk (R. Barkemeyer), breeda.comyns@kedgebs.com (B. Comyns), figge@sustainablevalue.com (F. Figge), g.napolitano@qub.ac.uk (G. Napolitano). 1 Tel.: +33 49182 7922; fax +33 49182 7983. 2 Tel.: +33 49182 7962; fax +33 49182 7983. 3 Tel.: +44 28 9097 6061. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.accfor.2014.07.002 0155-9982/© 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.