Corporate self, corporate reputation and corporate annual reports: re-enrolling Goffman

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Abstract

Although Goffman's work is widely invoked in the study of corporate reputations and of corporate annual reports, its use is often marked by an elision between the embodied self and the corporate ‘self’. In re-reading Goffman to clarify that effect, we bracket the assumption of a distinct ‘human nature’. We then select aspects of his ‘impression management’—defining the situation, holding secrets, invoking tact, passing the discreditable, and covering ‘dirty work’—to show how one Australian-based multinational forestry and manufacturing company, Amcor, uses its annual reports to set the interactive terms for construction of its reputation.

Introduction

In this paper, we focus on one Australian-based multinational, the forestry, paper-making and packaging company, Amcor, and in an examination of its annual reports demonstrate the usefulness of Goffman's repertoire for the analysis of corporate reputations and reports. We develop the analysis within the framework of a broad cluster of practical, conceptual and referential puzzles.

Practically, we are interested in how Amcor has used its reports to sustain its standing among investors and the public at large, by maintaining (as it has) an appearance as a helpful provider of information on its performance, both good and bad. This issue of its corporate reputation is all the more salient given that Amcor has withstood the potential damage to its reputation posed by successful operation in a highly competitive and environmentally sensitive industry. But, conceptually, we find a further puzzle in the study of ‘corporate reputations’. While analysts typically talk of the ‘corporate self’, the metaphorical extent of terms like ‘corporate identity’ or ‘corporate personality’ is not clear. Referentially, while many writers on both annual reports and corporate reputation allude in this context to Goffman's ‘impression management’, their usage tends to be more gestural than substantive; as Rindova noted although “firms also manage the impressions of observers, the phenomenon is less understood at the organizational level” (Rindova, 1998, p. 190). We resolve those puzzles in this study of impression management in Amcor's annual reports.

The use of Goffman allows us to consider how Amcor attempts to manage impressions in interaction with its various constituencies. A reworking of the problematic concept of the ‘corporate self’ is integral to our study. It allows us to offer sturdy additions to the conceptual armoury that can be brought to bear in the study of corporate reputations and annual reports.

We develop the paper as follows. After sketching instabilities in the language of the ‘self’ in studies of ‘corporate reputation’ and of corporate annual reports, we note that these limit the apparent usefulness of Goffman's work, despite its immediate appeal in both fields. We draw on Goffman's own extensions of his work from the individual level to collectivities to show how a ‘corporation’ can be treated as a ‘self’ in a Goffmanian analysis. That yields an approach to Amcor's annual reports, which we illustrate through the company's impression management over sensitive issues. In particular, Amcor exemplifies the construction of a corporate reputation through the fuzzy meeting of expectations which Goffman described as ‘Felicity's Condition.’ Finally, in noting that our reading of him is consistent with the ‘actor-network theory’ developed in science and technology studies, we conclude that the approach to corporate actors shown in our analysis is more widely applicable.

Section snippets

The ‘self’ in the analysis of corporate reputation and of corporate annual reports

The more the intuitively obvious term ‘corporate reputation’ is probed, the more uncertain it seems. Despite syntheses such as the Strathclyde Statement of the International Corporate Identity Group (e.g. van Riel & Balmer, 1997), the range of perspectives being brought to the field shows that there is still considerable room to move in the use of core concepts. As the contributors to symposia on communicative and organisational identity have shown (e.g. Deetz, 1993; Whetten & Godfrey, 1996),

Enrolling Goffman

This is not the place for an extended review of Goffman's studies (but see Ditton, 1980; Drew & Wootton, 1988; Burns, 1992; Manning, 1992). Leaving illustration of his themes to our case-material, we introduce his work here only to stress the analytical possibilities which he opened, to point to where he himself preempted them, and to suggest how they can be reopened. We take our point of departure in his Felicity's Condition, a term he borrowed from Austin's (1965) speech-act theory, where it

Amcor and annual reports

The multinational forestry, paper-making, and packaging company Amcor has been an Australian success over the last thirty years. It was among the country's largest listed companies in 1970, and has retained that position through the floating of the dollar, the reduction in tariffs, the opening of the labour market and the large-scale privatisations which have transformed the Australian economy since then. It was untouched by the scandals of the 1980s, it has steadily increased its dividends,

Impression management in Amcor's annual reports

Amcor's annual reports exemplify the avoidance of strangeness in Felicity's Condition. Before we show in detail that the techniques which Goffman described in the management of the self are also to be found there we need to make two preliminary and related points: that we are not judging the truth or otherwise of Amcor's claims; and that the company's self-presentation cannot be expected to be unitary. While the company undoubtedly presents itself in the best possible light, it is worth

Discussion

We began this paper with a cluster of interrelated puzzles. Practically, we were curious as to how Amcor constructed and sustained the terms for a solid corporate reputation despite the obstacles to its public reception. Conceptually, we were struck by the range of meanings attributed to such core terms as corporate identity, corporate personality or corporate reputation, and by the way that writers in the field applied findings from studies of individuals to corporations while retaining an

Acknowledgments

We thank Warren Sproule and the SJM's reviewers for their helpful comments on earlier versions of the paper.

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