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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATION, VOL. 49, NO. 3, SEPTEMBER 2006 217

A Corpus Analysis of Text Themes and PhotographicThemes in Managerial Forewords of Dutch-Englishand British Annual General Reports

—E. B. de GROOT, H. KORZILIUS, C. NICKERSON, AND M. GERRITSEN

Abstract—This genre-based study comprises a comparative content analysis of textual and pictorial themesin a corpus of Dutch-English and British managerial forewords. It indicates that there are significant thematicdifferences between the Dutch-English CEO’s statements, the British CEO’s statements, and the BritishChairman’s statements and that these may be attributable to communicative and historical conventions aswell as to current affairs in a particular business community. The present analysis, therefore, suggeststhat these managerial forewords cannot be considered as identical texts, although all are part of the samecomprehensive document (i.e., the annual report). As such, this study suggests that text analysts, instructors,and practitioners in intercultural communication should be sensitive to both textual and contextual features fora full understanding of professional texts in intercultural discourse situations.

Index Terms—Annual reports, genre analysis, intercultural communication, social context, thematic content.

Over the past three years, several linguistic andpolitical developments in the European businesscommunity have had a major impact on the annualgeneral reports of Dutch companies. First, theapplication of English has grown to be an immutablefact in the corporate communication discoursepractised within the Dutch business community; itis in widespread use in a variety of business genres,including product or job advertisements [1], [2],negotiations [3], and internal (email) communication[4], [5]. Moreover, recent studies have shown thatEnglish is currently replacing Dutch as a mainmedium of communication for annual reportsof Dutch companies [6], [7]. It seems clear thatbusiness organizations in the Netherlands areincreasingly opting for English not only to facilitateinternational trading or operations but also toproject a modern corporate image [1], [7]. A seconddevelopment has been brought about by corporatescandals, such as the controversy surrounding theDutch corporation AHOLD’s financial statementsin 2003. These scandals have focused political andeconomic attention on the necessary realization of

Manuscript received December 13,2005; revised February 20, 2006.E. B. de Groot, H. Korzilius, and M. Gerritsenare with Radboud University, 6500 HD Nijmegen,The Netherlands (email: [email protected];[email protected]; [email protected]).C. Nickerson is with Radboud University/AllianceBusiness Academy, Bangalore 560076, India (email:[email protected]).

IEEE DOI 10.1109/TPC.2006.880755

annual reports in which the texts that accompanythe financial accounts are accurate, transparent,and consistent. In addition to these previousdevelopments, it has also recently been determinedby the International Accounting Standards Boardthat, from 2005 onwards, all registered companieswithin the European Union (EU) are required toproduce their financial statements according to theEuropean Accounting Standards [8]. As a resultof this standardization in the financial part of theannual report, corporations will be increasinglyreliant on the nonfinancial elements in the annualreport as a means of distinguishing themselves fromtheir competitors. The textual elements in EU annualreports can thus be regarded as contributing to whatHyland has referred to as “the increasingly insistentundercurrent of a promotional culture in informativediscourse” [9, p. 242].

The emphasis on English as an internationalbusiness language, the introduction of Europeandisclosure requirements, and the growing significanceof nonfinancial texts for international marketinghave turned the annual report published by Dutchcompanies into a crucial, internationally orientedcorporate communication instrument. Consideringthe globalization of Dutch businesses and theneed to compete in the international businessarena, it is becoming increasingly important toinvestigate the similarities and differences betweenDutch corporations and corporations from otherEuropean cultures in their international (i.e., English)presentation of information in the annual report.

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218 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATION, VOL. 49, NO. 3, SEPTEMBER 2006

Although perhaps aiming at an equivalentinternational reader audience, different culturesmay rely on different discourse strategies tocommunicate with this audience. Accordingly, thepresent study seeks to compare and contrast theannual reports originating in the Netherlands andthe UK. Within the EU, Dutch and British businessorganizations are relatively similar in terms of theirfinancial success and the markets they participatein [7]. Dutch and British corporations are involvedin major trading relationships around the globeas well as in large joint ventures (e.g., Unilever,Logica CMG, Corus). They can thus be viewed ascomparable and competitive business cultures.Furthermore, corporate communication, includingfinancial reporting, is most likely to occur in Englishas the most dominant international businesslanguage. Consequently, Dutch readers are frequentlyconfronted with English texts, and likewise, Britishreaders (and all other non-Dutch stakeholders forthat matter) need to rely on English texts that areproduced within the Netherlands. A contrastive studyof the texts (originally written) in English withinDutch-English and British-English annual reports,therefore, provides a relevant example for the analysisof cross-cultural communication conventions, and aswe will discuss in the final section of this paper, theidentification of similarities and differences suggests anumber of important considerations for practitionersand educators alike.

THE ANNUAL REPORT AS A MULTIMODAL GENRE

ANNUAL REPORTS can be defined as a genre oforganizational communication, which meansthe social or rhetorical action they accomplishis bound to communicative practices occurringwithin a professional community [10]. From agenre perspective, texts such as annual reportsare characterized by recurrent situations in whichthey are used to serve a typical communicativepurpose for particular participants. Furthermore,genre theory argues that these contextual features(i.e., situation, participants, and purpose) causegeneric texts to incorporate typified substantiveand formal characteristics (i.e., content, structure,and lexico-grammatical elements) [11]–[13]. Severalstudies on American and European annual reportshave indicated that a genre approach to the variouscomponents within such reports allows for a usefulunderstanding of the annual report’s text featuresand the informational and commercial rationaleunderlying these features (e.g., [14]–[16]).

Studies of annual reports have shown that textualelements in these reports tend to be used to conveyinformation about the organization’s mission,its objectives, its policy, its relations with thesurrounding world, and the management review ofthe past year. Such nonfinancial texts are generally

included to explain and support the financial figuresin the accounts. Moreover, analyses of annual reportshave indicated that textual components also need toestablish a positive corporate image; therefore, theydo not only aim to enhance investors’ knowledgeabout the company, but they also aim to influenceinvestors’ attitudes toward investments [9], [17]–[19].In addition, contemporary annual reports do notrely on text alone, since rhetorical action is oftenestablished through the combined use of textual and(photo)graphic or visual modes. As such, the annualreport can be regarded as a multimodal genre.According to Kress and Van Leeuwen, multimodalitycomprises “the use of several semiotic modes in thedesign of a semiotic product or event, together withthe particular way in which the modes are combined”[20, p. 20].

With regard to the annual report as a genre oforganizational communication, the rhetorical functionof (photo)graphic content generally complements theinformation provided in the text. More specifically,visual content draws attention to visualized textdetails and also allows for a more tangible expressionof the cultural notions underlying the textualdescription of the company, the industry it operatesin, and the business practices it adheres to [21].This would seem to be the case for photographsin particular. Many of the nonfinancial texts inannual reports, such as managerial forewords oroperational reviews, are supported by photographsthat facilitate the reading process and enhance “waysof knowing” the company [22]. The reproduction ofcorporate “truth” in annual reports is commonlyestablished through the integration of photographsof real things—or documentary photographs. Thisis because “realistic photographs (. . .) telling anextended story constitute a documentary style, onethat can suggest the standards of accuracy andhonesty to which reports are held” [21, p. 209]. Assuch, photographs in annual general reports can alsobe regarded as rhetorical devices: “their function isto persuade the report reader of the truth claimsof the accounts and thus to perpetuate the valuesthat reside in them” [23, p. 62]. In short, while theannual report was introduced as a mere financialdisclosure tool, today it has evolved into an importantinvestor relations tool which contains both text andvisuals to express “why our company is a worthwhileinvestment” [17, p. 6].

ANNUAL REPORTS IN THE NETHERLANDS AND INTHE UK: GENRE CONTEXT

Drawing on genre theory, it is suggested here thata true understanding of a text-genre can only begleaned through an investigation of the socialcontext within which the text evolves. As forstudies on nonfinancial texts in British and Dutch(English) annual reports, some have looked at the

De GROOT et al.: CORPUS ANALYSIS OF TEXT THEMES AND PHOTOGRAPHIC THEMES IN MANAGERIAL FOREWORDS 219

relationship between specific contextual items thathave been theoretically defined and how these havethen been textualized. Hooghiemstra, for instance,discusses how cultural norms of self-protection andself-enhancement affect performance discussions inannual reports of Dutch corporations and comparesthese to the annual reports of American and Japanesecompanies [24]. Another example involves an analysisby Beattie, McInnes, and Fearnley, who relate topicalpatterns in British annual reports to the businessindustry in which these reports have emerged [25].

To date, however, few studies have collectedinformation systematically from the businesscommunity in order to establish a more elaboratepicture of the discourse context in which Britishand Dutch (English) annual reports are produced.In a recent genre study, de Groot uses the resultsof interviews in British and Dutch corporations toformulate the communicative rationale behind the(English) texts in annual reports produced in theBritish and Dutch business communities [6]. Herfindings reflect ideas about the language policies,communicative purposes, discourse participants,production processes, and regulations that underliethe realization of the Dutch (English) and theBritish annual reports. Fig. 1 summarizes andcompares the interview results across the twocultures. From a genre perspective, de Groot’sanalysis of the social context for (English) annualreports published by Dutch and British corporationsyielded three interesting implications. First, theresults indicated that the Dutch and British annualreports are comparable documents, as they sharecrucial contextual features, such as communicativeobjectives and audience [6]. Second, the interviewsrevealed that the annual report in both cultures isconstituted by a set of different texts or genres whichserve various purposes and readers and may havedistinct writers or titles (see items marked with �, ��,and � � � in Fig. 1).

The genre set may differ slightly across cultures. Forexample, the Dutch annual reports only contain asummarizing CEO’s statement by the chief managingdirector, whereas the British annual reports includea Chairman’s statement offering a top-line overviewby the chief supervisory director and a more elaborateCEO’s statement. According to the informants, theDutch CEO’s statement contextually resemblesboth the British Chairman’s statement and theBritish CEO’s statement; its aim is to offer strategicinformation on group-related performance, like theBritish CEO’s statement, and it is discoursal inthe sense that it seeks to establish a writer-readerrelationship through a personalized message, likethe British Chairman’s statement. Furthermore,the target audience for the Dutch CEO’s statementconsists of all readers of the annual report, whilethe British Chairman’s statement aims to reach all

readers in principle but the shareholders in particular,and the British CEO’s statement exclusively aims atthe shareholders [6]. The third important implicationinvolves the perceived role of the Dutch and Britishannual report as a genre set within the company’s fullrepertoire of communication instruments. Whereasthe annual report of Dutch companies merelyfunctions as a reference document among other, moredynamic financial communication genres, the Britishannual report does that and in addition functionsas an informative brochure among other externalcorporate communication genres [6].

TOWARDS A DEFINITION OF “THEME”In rhetorical genre analysis, substance is what thetexts are about (i.e., their content) [26], [27]. It is whatMiller has called “the aspects of common experiencesymbolized in the text” [11, p. 158]. Berkenkotter andHuckin emphasize that the concept of communicativepurpose differs from the concept of substance orcontent: they propose that genre purpose determineswhat specific genre content is appropriate “in aparticular situation at a particular point in time” [28,p. 13]. Drawing on these ideas, genre analysts inprofessional contexts have often summarized genresubstance or genre content in terms of recurrentthemes or subject matter (referred to here as themes)[10], [26], [28]. The distinction between genres acrosscultures from a substantive perspective has receivedvery little attention, perhaps because it concerns theleast explicit level of text-related genre typification.And although genre substance does not in itself definea particular genre, it is emphasized here that it doesgive meaning or “semantic value” to a genre and, assuch, is crucial to the realization and interpretationof a genre [11, p. 60].

In the present study, the generic interpretation ofEnglish annual reports originating in Dutch andBritish companies will be extended by means of aninventory of genre SUBSTANCE, the typified thematiccontent of a text (see also the section entitled, “theannual report as a multimodal genre”). It is assumedthat the establishment of themes in multimodal textsis based upon the conceptual linking of expressionsfound in language, images, or sounds [29]. Thisapproach comprises the cognitive mapping of themesin a text, which in turn allows for a relationshipbetween verbal or visual expressions and theircombined meaning within the social context in whicha text occurs (e.g., [30], [31]). As a result, and inaccordance with Smith and Taffler [32] and Osborne,Stubbart, and Ramaprasad [33], TEXT THEMES will bedefined here as being made up of clusters of wordsthat may have incoherent meanings or connotationsoutside the scope of a particular text but that areconceptually related within the boundaries of thattext. As such, they can be viewed as keywordsthat constitute a thematic unit through which the


direct and indirect message conveyed in the text isrevealed. The identification of thematic word clustersin professional texts is not merely restricted to actualnominalizations, such as disposal for the “closure”theme or loans for the “borrowings” theme [32].Rather, themes may be “manifested in the form of a

word, a phrase, or a statement that interprets eventsin the past, envisions events in the future, or depictscurrent events” [33, p. 194]. In their 2001 study ofAmerican CEO’s Letters to Shareholders, for instance,Osborne et al. exemplify the identification of a themelabeled “overseas expansion” through a topical map,

Fig. 1. Cross-cultural overlap and variation in the genre context of the annual report in the Netherlands and the UK[based on [6]].


in which the combined meaning of keywords is relatedto this theme (see Fig. 2) [33].

An example in which phrasal expressions contributeto the establishment of a theme can be found in Smithand Taffler’s analysis of Chairmen’s statements inannual reports of UK-based companies [32]. Here, the“resignations” theme is constituted by the meaning ofphrases, such as Chairman resigns or New managingdirector appointed [32, p. 631].

In this study, the analysis will be extended within thedescription of text themes to include photographicthemes, since these may be viewed as an importantaspect of the substance or content of the text in themultimodal annual report. Similar to readers of atext, viewers of a photograph search for elementaryclues that enable them to interpret the photographicmeaning [22]. Accordingly, it can also be assumedthat a visual theme is discerned by associatingcoherent visual elements that have been perceived.Kress and Van Leeuwen support this idea in theirsemiotic interpretation of multimodal discourse,where modes are defined as semiotic resourcesthrough which “discourse and types of (inter)action”can be designed [20, p. 21]. They explain that modesin photographs are constituted by a set of signsthat give meaning to these photographs and thatarticulate how these photographs, and any additionaltext, should be read and understood [20]. In theiranalysis of a cover picture of the British Home Flairmagazine, for instance, Kress and Van Leeuwenidentify the nostalgic themes of “tradition,” “heritage,”and “aesthetics” based on the conceptual linking ofvisualized objects, such as tables and chairs withturned legs, soft check furnishings, enamel jugs,pottery, a flower jug with tulips, and colors, suchas warm reds, blues, whites, and yellows. Hence,these themes are predominantly realized through theobjects-as-mode (furniture, furnishings, pottery, etc.)and the colors-as-mode (red, yellow, etc.). Similarto the text themes, these photographic themes canbe integrated in a map that shows their conceptualconstruction, as is shown in Fig. 3.

Examples of the way in which the construct themewas first defined and then applied to the texts andphotographs in the present study are presented laterin this paper.

Fig. 2. Map of overseas expansion text theme [based on[31]].

RESEARCH QUESTIONS

The themes or thematic content incorporated ina particular genre may differ across businesscultures. As Nickerson [4], Berkenkotter and Huckin[28], and Couture [34] discuss, different socialcommunities—whether national, academic, orprofessional—may choose to symbolize differentaspects of their experience in the same situationsinvolving the same participants in order to achieve thesame social action. In the present study, since twodistinct national and business cultures are involved,it seemed plausible that an analysis of the themesin the nonfinancial texts in the respective annualreports, as examples of prominent substantive orcontent features, would reveal variations betweenthe two. These assumptions do not only apply totext themes, but are also relevant for photographicthemes. Readers of the annual report are oftenencouraged to refer to both text and photographsin their interpretation of text content. Previousstudies of the rhetorical relevance of photographsincorporated in professional texts suggest that suchphotographs are likely to thematically resembleand/or complement the thematic content of thosetexts, either directly or indirectly [20], [22], [35]. Froma genre perspective, this implies that photographicthemes within a textual genre may also vary acrossnational or professional communities. The study,therefore, aimed to answer the following questions:

(1) What are the typified substantivecharacteristics (realized as themes in textsand photographs) in the English managerialforewords in annual general reportsoriginating in Dutch and British corporations?

(2) To what extent do the substantivecharacteristics used in Dutch-Englishannual reports differ from the substantivecharacteristics in British-English annualreports?

In answer to these research questions, the presentstudy contains a corpus-based study of the textualand photographic themes that typify the individualrealizations of texts in the Dutch-English and Britishannual general report (i.e., the Dutch-English andBritish-English managerial forewords). After reportingon the occurrence of themes in these texts, theresearch findings, where relevant, will be related tothe contextual information revealed in de Groot’s

Fig. 3. Map of nostalgia photo theme [based on [20]].


qualitative study of genre context for British andDutch annual general reports [6].

It should be noted that this analysis of themesis part of a wider genre project to investigate thesubstantive and formal characteristics of the annualreport in the two business cultures. If indeed theDutch-English and British annual reports appear todiffer substantively and/or formally, an experimentalinvestigation will be conducted in the future todetermine whether both versions are equally effectivefrom the viewpoint of their international readergroups.

RESEARCH DESIGN

Research Material Based on the idea that managerialforewords form an important “contribution towardcorporate impression management” [36, p. 396] andthus add to the persuasive potential of the annualreport, the present study specifically concerns thethemes incorporated within these texts. It will focuson managerial forewords of the English 2003 reportsof Dutch and British corporations. The annualgeneral reports included in this study consisted ofeither one single report encompassing both an annualreview and annual accounts, or they comprisedtwo documents in which review and accounts arepresented separately.

In the Netherlands, these managerial forewords aregenerally described in a variety of terms, such asreport/letter to shareholders, CEO’s statement/letter,foreword by the Chairman and CEO, or Chairman’sstatement/message. These types of Dutch-Englishintroductory documents are all signed by the ChiefExecutive Officer and will, therefore, be referredto in this study as the CEO’s statement. In theUK, these forewords are commonly entitled CEO’sstatement/review/report on the one hand andChairman’s statement/message/report on the otherhand. These British-English documents are all signedby the CEO and the nonexecutive Chairman of theBoard, respectively, and will hence be referred tohere as the British CEO’s statement and the BritishChairman’s statement.

Previous research has primarily dealt with themanagerial forewords printed first in annual generalreports, in this case the Dutch CEO’s statements andthe British Chairman’s statements. However, in theircomparative genre analyses of British and Dutchannual general reports, de Groot and Nickerson andde Groot show that the Dutch CEO’s statements andthe British Chairman’s statements—although bothintroductory documents in the Dutch and Britishannual reports—do not have the same communicativefunction [6], [7]. Moreover, their analyses indicatethat the British CEO’s statement, generally followingthe Chairman’s statement in British reports, is notrhetorically equivalent to the Dutch CEO’s statement.

Nickerson and de Groot suggest that, due to thedifferent responsibilities of the supervising chairmanand the managing CEO and due to the absence of aChairman’s statement in Dutch annual reports, theDutch CEO’s statement “covers much of the rhetoricalground realized in the British Chairman’s and CEO’sstatements combined” [7, p. 341]. Assuming thatthe Dutch CEO’s statement, the British Chairman’sstatement, and the British CEO’s statements reflectcontextual and rhetorical overlap, the present studywill investigate whether this overlap can also be tracedin their thematic contents (i.e., genre substance).Accordingly, it includes all three documents.

Selection of Annual Reports and Texts Takinginto consideration the extensive use of English inthe financial reporting of Dutch companies, thecurrent project focused exclusively on annual reportspublished in English in the Netherlands and in theUK. Statements by CEOs and Chairmen were derivedfrom English annual general reports of publiclytraded companies, which were either quoted onthe Amsterdam stock exchange or on the Londonstock exchange. The initial research populationcontained 103 annual reports, 49 of which had beenpublished in the Netherlands and 54 of which hadbeen published in the UK. All of these companiesparticipated in international activities and publishedan English version of their annual report.

The sampling procedures used resembled thoseapplied in previous investigations on culturalinfluences on accounting [24], [37] and businessmanagement [38]. They encompass both purposivesampling and cluster sampling [39]. Annual reportsfor analysis were first selected on the basis of companysize, English language policy, and Anglo-Dutchmerger history. Here, size ranking relates to criteriaset for the Amsterdam and London stock exchanges(i.e., profits, assets, and market value). This purposivesampling procedure was used because size influencedthe legal and market-related role of the annual report,while language policy and Anglo-Dutch merger historydetermined linguistic focus (i.e., the prominence ofEnglish for the Dutch corpus). Companies that wereincluded in this study were characterized by (1) alarge to mid-size capital base, (2) an original Englishversion of the annual report, and (3) authenticcultural origins (i.e., traditionally Dutch or British).The annual reports of different-sized companies wereclustered according to industry. More specifically, theindustries of Dutch samples needed to be matchedwith the industries of British samples in order toassure comparability of documents. Both samplingprocedures eventually resulted in a total sampleof English annual general reports published by 44companies (i.e., 22 Dutch companies in 15 differentindustries and 22 British equivalents). Subsequently,all CEO’s and Chairman’s statements were collectedfrom these 44 selected annual general reports. Within


the 22 annual reports of Dutch companies, 20 CEO’sstatements were found; the total collection of Britishreports contained 16 Chairman’s statements and 18CEO’s statements. Hence, the total sample of texts forthe analysis of textual and visual themes was madeup of 54 statements.

Analysis of Themes in Texts and Pho-tographs Based on Ryan and Bernard [29], Carleyand Palmquist [30], Smith and Taffler [32], andOsborne et al. [33], TEXT THEMES were defined asclusters of keywords/key phrases with coherentmeanings. Throughout the current research project,text themes in English CEO’s statements andChairman’s statements were, therefore, identifiedand registered when the meaning of several words orword strings could be grouped together to establisha higher order thematic concept. The “futureperformance” theme, for example, could be definedthrough the words or phrases: prospects, outlookwe expect, forward, recovery, continue, Company Xwill be investing. Keywords constituting the “future”theme all referred to corporate objectives and/orspeculations for the short- to mid-term. Keywordswere not necessarily restricted to a single theme andcould be interchangeable across several thematicschemata. The keyword recovery, for instance,could also be ascribed to the “business context”theme, which in addition comprised words andphrases such as during, second half of the year,economic environment, and the developed world.Table I shows four examples of text themes that wereregistered during the analysis. A list of all text themesencountered in the Dutch-English and British CEO’sstatements and in the British Chairman’s statementsis presented in Appendix A.

In the present study, visual themes were analyzedexclusively for the documentary photographs in themanagement statements. More than any other type ofgraphical illustrations, these realistic pictures appearto make a crucial contribution to the persuasivepotential of texts included in the annual report.The analysis of photographic themes was based onthe multimodal discourse approach of Kress andVan Leeuwen, which means that the focus was onmodes and their constitutive signs that articulatewhat the picture is about (see also the sectionentitled, “the annual report as a multimodal genre”)[20]. More specifically, throughout the analysis,photographic themes were established by exclusivelyassociating objects (not colors, patterns, etc.) thatwere displayed in the picture and, if necessary,relating them to complementary descriptive texts,by using the objects-as-mode (and possibly thewritten language-as-mode) to acquire a set ofthematically related signs. The objects-as-mode wasof particular relevance, as it would result in relativelyunambiguous, concrete-level themes that are directlytranslatable to what is portrayed in the photograph.

For example, a picture in which aisles with shelves offood products, shopping baskets, shopping carts, andadult females in casual clothes could be perceivedwas categorized under the “service area” theme.Similar to the text themes, photographic themes weredefinable by elements that could also be constitutiveof other photographic themes. Table II provides threeexamples of photographic themes that were discernedin the three types of statements. A full list of allphotographic themes is included in Appendix B.

Interrater Reliability of Themes in Texts of AnnualReports To assess the plausibility of the thematiccoding used to register textual and visual themes persection in the annual reports, an interrater reliabilityanalysis was conducted. This analysis measures the

TABLE IEXAMPLES OF TEXT THEMES

TABLE IIEXAMPLES OF PHOTOGRAPHIC THEMES


degree to which two or more observers agree on theimplementation of a certain rating system [40]. Inthe present study, the measurement instrument wastested in terms of “the extent to which similar values[could] be expected to emerge when the measurement[was] carried out on a second occasion” [41, p.190]. Hence, a second rater was asked to execute athematic registration of the same kind, describingmanagement statements in terms of textual andphotographic themes per annual report from theNetherlands and the UK. The first rater was a nativespeaker of Dutch with Masters degrees in Englishand Communication Studies. The second raterwas also a native speaker of Dutch with a Mastersdegree in Business Communication Studies, with alanguage studies specialism. Each rater needed toanalyze forewords in at least 10% of the total sampleof annual reports, at least four annual reports (10%of 44 = 4.4 annual reports) [39]. Since clusteredsampling took place and each annual report from theNetherlands had been paired with a British reportpublished in an equivalent industry, the samplestructure was maintained within the interraterreliability analysis. Therefore, the two raters analyzedmanagerial forewords in six annual reports: threeDutch-English reports and three British reports,constituting three pairs of reports matched byindustry. Within the full Dutch sample, three annualreports were randomly selected and then matchedwith three British equivalents. In total, the two codersanalyzed 21 pages of management statements.

Before starting the interrater reliability analysis, bothobservers discussed the initial code system duringtwo consecutive meetings to clarify the classificationof themes. After the first meeting, the observersconducted a pilot study individually with an identicalpair of Dutch-English and British reports that werenot included in the random sample for the officialinterrater reliability analysis. Once the results of thispilot study were discussed and the coding scheme wasrevised during the second meeting, both observersanalyzed the themes for the six randomly sampledannual reports using the SPSS program.

Cohen’s Kappa was used to measure the degree ofinterrater agreement per theme type. The qualificationof test results for Kappa was based on Rietveld andVan Hout [41]. The interrater agreement of the twoindependent raters’ assessment of text themes inannual reports by Dutch and British corporations wassubstantial; Kappas were found in a range from �.02to 1.00, with a mean of .65 (SD = 0:24). The meanagreement percentage for the text themes was 96.90.The interrater agreement of the two independentraters’ assessment of photo themes in annual reportsby Dutch and British corporations was almost perfect;Kappas were found in a range from .48 to 1.00, witha mean of .91 (SD = 0:18). The mean agreementpercentage for the photo themes was 98.44. Negative

Kappa values occurred in situations where bothraters simultaneously agreed on the nonoccurrence ofa certain sub theme. It can, therefore, be concludedthat the coding scheme used for the classification oftext themes and photo themes in annual reports wasreliable.

RESULTS

Text Themes: Descriptive and Inferential Data TheDutch-English and British CEO’s statements andthe British Chairman’s statements comprised 97text themes in total (see Appendix A). The full listof text themes indicates that these statementsare complex documents covering text themesabout various corporate issues such as finance,operations, corporate strategy, marketing, humanresource management (HRM), and Corporate SocialResponsibility (CSR), share management, etc. Ofthe 97 themes that occurred within these texts, 15appeared to be most prominent across the three typesof statements (i.e., they occurred in more than 50% ofone, two, or all three statement types). Table III showsthe total percentages of occurrence for the 15 mostfrequent themes, as well as any significant differencein occurrence.

The percentages of occurrence in Table III reveal thateach statement type contained several main textthemes with relatively high frequency scores. Whenconsidering frequency scores of >70.0% per statementtype, Table III indicates a Top 5 of main text themesin the Dutch-English CEO’s statements that wereanalyzed: (1) the “HRM/people” theme, which coversinformation on work conditions and appreciation forthe workforce (100.0%), (2) the “general operationalresults” theme (95.0%), (3) the “future” theme (also95.0%), (4) the “corporate strategy” theme (90.0%),and (5) the “shareholder confidence” theme (85.0%).As for the British CEO’s statements, four maintext themes occurred in more than 70.0% of thesestatements. Accordingly, a Top 4 could be identified,consisting of: (1) the “corporate strategy” theme(94.4%), (2) the “future” theme (88.9%), (3) the“general operational results” theme (77.8%), and (4)the “shareholder confidence” theme (72.2%). A “Top 6”of main text themes could be observed for the BritishChairman’s statements: (1) the “HRM/people” theme(93.8%), (2) the “shareholder confidence” theme (also93.8%), (3) the “future” theme (87.5%), (4) the “boarddetails” theme, which comprises details about boardmembers and changes in the board (also 87.5%), (5)the “general operational results” theme (81.3%), and(6) the “dividend” theme (also 81.3%).

Chi-Square tests and Fisher’s Exact tests showedthat there were significant differences acrossstatement types for four of the top score themesand two other main text themes. A first significantdistinction was observed between the British CEO’s


statements and the British Chairman’s statementswith respect to the “corporate strategy” and the“board details” themes; whereas the British CEO’sstatements included significantly more details on the“corporate strategy” theme, the British Chairman’sstatements comprised significantly more instancesof the “board details” theme. Second, the analysisof text themes indicated significant variationsbetween the Dutch-English CEO’s statements andthe British CEO’s statements, where the formerrevealed significantly higher frequency scores forboth the “HRM/people” theme and the “corporategovernance” theme. A third significant distinctionwas observed between the Dutch-English CEO’sstatements and the British Chairman’s statements;the British Chairman’s statements significantly moreoften disclosed information on the “CSR” theme thanthe Dutch CEO’s statements. Finally, the corpusanalysis suggested that the three types of statementsdiffer significantly with regard to the “dividend”theme. Compared to the Dutch CEO’s statementsand the British CEO’s statements, significantly moreBritish Chairman’s statements included details onthis theme.

Photographic Themes: Descriptive and InferentialData In the analysis of photographs in themanagement statements, 23 themes could be

distinguished in the 45 documents that actuallycontained documentary pictures (see Appendix B).The frequency distribution for photographicthemes in Appendix B shows that the pictorialcontents of Dutch-English and British CEO’sstatements and British Chairman’s statementscentered around specific company-related items:management members, workplace, and employees.As a relatively large number of the themes registeredfor the managerial forewords were related to thesethree items, they have been clustered here inthe description of thematic contents. Clusteringavoids the fragmentation of results and allows fora more comprehensive and meaningful explanationof photographic themes. Themes that had anambiguous meaning (e.g., referring to employees +clients) were omitted from the table to avoid overlapbetween the categories. Only the most frequentvisual themes are shown in Table IV, as well as anysignificant differences in themes across statements.Furthermore, the total frequency scores per categoryacross management statements were added todetermine whether any significant differencesoccurred with respect to clustered themes. The totalfrequency scores per category do not merely comprisethe sum of scores displayed for specific photo themes,as some individual annual reports contained severalspecific themes belonging to the same thematic

TABLE IIIFREQUENCY SCORES FOR TEXT THEMES OCCURRING 50% PER STATEMENT TYPE


cluster. They indicate, for instance, how many annualreports included pictures portraying members ofmanagement.

For the investigation of the specific photo themes,Table IV indicates that a limited number of pictureswith main themes were used throughout the threetypes of statements. In the Dutch-English CEO’sstatements, the “CEO” theme showed a “top”score (58.8%), followed by the “all executive boarddirectors” theme (35.3%). Similarly, the British CEO’sstatements reflected the highest score for the “CEO”theme (93.8). In addition, they contained relativelyhigh frequency scores for the “male employee” theme(37.5%) and the “female employee” theme (25.0%).The visual substance of the British Chairman’sstatements presented an absolute “top” score for the“chairman” theme (100.0%).

The total frequency scores for clustered themesin Table IV partly confirm what was revealed bythe scores for specific photo themes, but theyalso contribute several new interesting results.Those results show that the photographic contentof Dutch-English CEO’s statements was marked

primarily by themes referring to members of themanagement team (94.1%). In addition, the BritishCEO’s statements mostly comprised photographicthemes that reflected members of the board (93.8%).However, these also showed relatively high frequencyscores for employee-related photo themes (37.5%)as well as workplace-related photo themes (31.3%).The British Chairman’s statements again focusedpredominantly on photographic themes associatedwith management (100.0%).

With respect to the specific themes that mainlyconstituted photographic content, the Chi-Squaretests and the Fisher’s Exact tests revealed severalsignificant differences across the three types ofstatements. For instance, a comparison acrossstatements indicated that the Dutch-English CEO’sstatements contained a significantly high score forphotographs displaying all executive directors in thecompany. This was also the case for pictures of femaleemployees, which were significantly overrepresentedin the British CEO’s statements. Next, Table IVshows that the British CEO’s statements and theBritish Chairman’s statements vary significantly withrespect to the “CEO” theme of included pictures;

TABLE IVFREQUENCY SCORES FOR PHOTO THEMES PER STATEMENT TYPE

WITH ADDED FREQUENCY SCORES FOR THEME CATEGORIES [42]


not surprisingly, pictures of the CEO occurredexclusively in the former type of statement. There wasanother significant difference in photographic themesbetween the Dutch-English and the British CEO’sstatements, where photographs of male employeeswere not incorporated in any Dutch-EnglishCEO’s statement but appeared in a significantlylarger number of British CEO’s statements. A lastsignificant distinction concerning the “chairman”theme could be observed across all three statementtypes. Photographs portraying the nonexecutiveChairman, quite logically, only appeared within thetext boundaries of the British Chairman’s statements.

Chi-Square tests and Fisher’s Exact tests forthe clustered photographic themes showed twoadditional significant differences. First, there was asignificant distinction between the Dutch-EnglishCEO’s statements and the British CEO’s statementsfor the category representing employee-relatedthemes. Here, a significantly larger number of BritishCEO’s statements included pictures portraying thecompany’s employees. Second, the clustered themesrevealed a significant result for the British CEO’sstatement only—these contained a significantly highfrequency score (i.e., an overrepresentation) of themesreferring to the workplace.

CONCLUSIONS

This study aimed to establish the substantive orcontent characteristics of managerial statements inDutch-English and British annual reports and toreveal any differences between these statements.In answer to these questions, the analysis of textthemes and photographic themes in Dutch-Englishand British managerial statements yielded severalinteresting findings from both a cross-textual and across-cultural perspective. A further explanation forthese findings may be found in the social or discoursecontext within which the managerial statementsare produced, in particular related to those aspectsexamined in de Groot’s study on genre context [6](see also the section entitled, “annual reports in theNetherlands and in the UK: genre context”). As such,the present investigation has important implicationsfor educators, researchers, and practitioners teachingor engaging in intercultural communication. Itsuggests that texts originating in a particulardiscourse situation do not exist in isolation; on thecontrary, they emerge on the basis of continuousinteraction with the social community in which theyare realized.

General Similarity in Textual and PhotographicContent Across Statement Types Perhaps inkeeping with the titles of the management documentsin Dutch-English and British annual reports, thecurrent analysis revealed some general thematiccommonalities across the three types of statements.

With regard to the text themes, it can be concludedthat the overall content of the Dutch-English CEO’sstatements, the British CEO’s statements, and theBritish Chairman’s statements included in thisstudy primarily reported on group-level issues; thethematic analysis showed that the main text themesin all statements involved corporate performance(either covering the group or each of its divisions)as well as corporate policies and were focused onassuring readers of the future well-being of thecompany. This was illustrated in shared main themesconcerning business context, general financialresults, general operational results, shareholderconfidence, marketing, market position, and futureprospects. As for the categorized or clusteredphotographic themes, general equivalence in visualcontent across statement types could be establishedfor pictures representing members of management. Itwas apparent that portraits of board members (e.g.,CEO’s, Chairmen, Executive Directors) identifyingthe sender of the message and thus identifying thegroup company were especially popular in all threetypes of management statements. As such, thesefindings support the idea expressed in de Groot’sinterviews that managerial statements produced inthe Netherlands and in the UK should serve therhetorical purpose of offering a brief, informative butpersonal overview of the company’s achievements inthe past year [6].

Although those involved in intercultural discourse(e.g., instructors and their students, practitionersand their business relations, analysts) might easilyrecognize the shared group-level nature of themultimodal statements’ general thematic substance,the present study also exhibited several significantsubtle differences in content that may point to ageneric variation between the Dutch-English CEO’sstatements, the British CEO’s statements, andthe British Chairman’s statements. This genericvariation, also incorporating social context if ofparticular relevance, may influence the productionand interpretation of the Dutch-English and Britishdocuments under investigation, an awarenessof which is crucial to successful multimodalcommunication across the two cultures.

Thematic Differences in Text Content AcrossStatement Types The results of the present texttheme analysis indicated that there were significantvariations in content (1) between the British CEO’sand British Chairman’s statements, (2) between theDutch-English CEO’s and British CEO’s statements,(3) between the Dutch-English CEO’s and BritishChairman’s statements, and (4) between theDutch-English CEO’s, the British CEO’s, and theBritish Chairman’s statements. Although the firstvariation occurred across documents within oneculture (i.e., the UK), it is nevertheless interestingto clarify why these are thematically distinct text


types and how each relates to English-languagemanagement statements in a different businesscommunity (the Netherlands in this research).

Differences in Text Themes: British CEO’s andBritish Chairman’s Statements: In the British CEO’sstatements and the British Chairman’s statements,significant differences were found in the use of the“corporate strategy” theme and the “board details”theme. While the British CEO’s statements showedsignificantly higher scores on the “corporate strategy”theme, the British Chairman’s statements comprisedsignificantly higher scores on the “board details”theme. First, the strategy-related findings may beattributable to different notions of professionalresponsibilities and the communicative purpose perstatement type. In general, Dutch and British CEO’sare actively involved in the strategic and operationalmanagement of the company and need to reportabout this in the annual general report. However,British Chairmen—fulfilling a function that is notcommonly integrated in one management boardbut incorporated in a separate Supervisory Boardwithin Dutch corporations—supervise, advise, andcommunicate about the executive management board.

Considering these contrasts in professional mandate,it seems plausible that information about thestrategic direction of the company is more likelyto be conveyed through the Dutch-English andBritish CEO’s statements than through the BritishChairman’s statements [7]. This assumption isconfirmed by the communicative purpose de Groot’sinformants ascribed to the Dutch-English and BritishCEO’s statements on the one hand and the BritishChairman’s statements on the other. Dutch andBritish informants claimed that the CEO’s statementneeds to establish a strategic background againstwhich the results can be interpreted and Britishinformants explained that the Chairman’s statementshould merely offer a top-line performance overview[6]. Second, the significant findings related to boarddetails may again be explained by referring to theChairman’s position within British organizations.As the British Chairman’s task is to evaluate andsupervise leadership in the company, details aboutchanges in the board and shifts in managementresponsibilities seem to be more appropriate in theChairman’s statement than in the British CEO’sstatement, which emphasizes operational andstrategic issues.

Differences in Text Themes: Dutch-English CEO’sand British CEO’s Statements: The present studyalso revealed significant differences in text themesbetween the Dutch-English CEO’s statements and theBritish CEO’s statements. Here, significant variationwas observed for the “HRM/people” theme and the“corporate governance” theme. Both themes occurredin a significantly higher number of Dutch-English

CEO’s statements. Two text-related aspects may havecaused the difference in the “HRM/people” theme:reader audience and communicative purpose of themanagerial statement. As for the Dutch-EnglishCEO’s statement in particular, the Dutch informantsin de Groot’s context study claimed that it aims toreach a broad audience, including shareholders,employees, analysts, journalists, etc. They alsoexplained that for the Dutch (English) annualreport in its entirety, the employees are consideredmost important after those target groups with afinancial interest in the company [6]. Therefore, itseems plausible that an introductory document inannual reports originating in the Netherlands shouldexplicitly refer to issues involving one of the mainreader groups of such reports. In contrast, de Groot’sBritish informants suggested that the British CEO’sstatement should specifically focus on reader needsof shareholders, which is in line with their remarksthat the primary reader group for the British annualreport in its entirety comprises institutional andprivate investors. British respondents believed theemployees to be the least important reader groupfor the British annual report [6]. Consequently, it isnot surprising that minimal attention is paid to the“HRM/people” theme in the British CEO’s statements.Moreover, the difference in communicative objectivesis also likely to contribute to the significant differencebetween the Dutch-English and British CEO’sstatements. Whereas the Dutch-English CEO’sstatement is discoursal and needs to establish apersonal relationship with readers of the annualreport, the British CEO’s statement is more similar toa narrative in which an informative account of resultsis offered [6].

The second significant distinction between theDutch-English and British CEO’s statements,concerning the “corporate governance” theme, maywell have a socio-political cause. Although bothsenders of the message are professionally involvedin company operations and less so in monitoring itsmanagement, the fact that corporate governance wasa much-discussed topic in the regulatory environmentof the Dutch business community in 2003 may haveresulted in a frequency peak for this theme withinthe introductory statement of Dutch-English annualreports. The focus on corporate governance in thesereports could have been the result of a newly proposedgovernance code (the Tabaksblat code) and theCorporate Governance Committee’s appeal to quotedcompanies for a record on preliminary compliancewith the new governance requirements [41].

Differences in Text Themes: Dutch-English CEO’sand British Chairman’s Statements: A significantdifference could furthermore be observed betweenthe Dutch-English CEO’s statements and the BritishChairman’s statements; the British Chairman’sstatements included significantly more information


on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) orsustainability, than the Dutch-English CEO’sstatements. Similar to the significant variation forthe “corporate governance” theme, the significantvariation across statements for the “CSR” theme isperhaps also owing to socio-political developments. Atri-annual study by KPMG, for example, documentedthat in the periods from 1996 to 1999 to 2002, theTop 100 companies in the UK showed a large increasein reports on CSR topics. For instance, in 1996, 27%of these companies reported on CSR, in 1999, 32%did, and in 2002, 49% reported on this topic. Assuch, the reporting percentages in the UK contrastedwith those in the Netherlands, where the number ofthe Top 100 companies conveying CSR details grewmoderately; 20% of these Dutch companies publishedCSR information in 1996, 25% reported on CSR in1999, and 35% did so in 2002. Interestingly, at thetime the KPMG study took place, the Netherlands hadalready adopted legal requirements for CSR reporting,while the UK was still encouraging CSR reportingthrough best practice guidelines [44]. It appears as ifstakeholder interests in CSR exploded in the UK atthe beginning of the new millennium, resulting in asubstantial increase in voluntary CSR reporting by UKcompanies. Assuming that this trend continued into2003, the significantly higher frequency score of the“CSR” theme in the introductory British Chairman’sstatement might be a reasonable consequence. Thistrend would also account for the significantly lowerfrequency score for this theme in the Dutch-EnglishCEO’s statement.

Differences in Text Themes: Dutch-English CEO’s,British CEO’s, and British Chairman’s Statements:The last significant difference in text content acrossall statement types was observed for the “dividend”theme. For this theme, the British Chairman’sstatements scored significantly higher than both theDutch-English CEO’s statements and the BritishCEO’s statements. This distinction would again seemto reflect the professional position of the sender ofthe message within the organization. The monitoringfunction of Chairmen in British corporations meansthey should identify with and promote shareholderinterests. As such, their function is different fromthe Dutch and British CEO’s, whose priorities arecompany-related. Therefore, information aboutshareholder benefits in terms of dividends is likely tobe crucial to the content of the British Chairman’sstatements.

Thematic Differences in Photographic ContentAcross Statement Types Across the three types ofmanagerial forewords, several significant contentvariations were also documented with respectto specific and clustered photo themes, most ofwhich comprised variations in management-relatedand employee-related pictures. Diverse significantdifferences between specific photo themes across

various statement types occurred within theclustered themes; therefore, significant differencesare discussed here per category of photo themes.Results for photo themes revealed differences withinand across cultures. Differences between the BritishCEO’s and British Chairman’s statements wereagain relevant in analyzing how each compared tothe Dutch-English CEO’s statements in terms ofphotographic content.

Differences in Photo Themes: Members of theManagement Team: On the general level of clusteredphoto themes, no significant differences were foundfor pictures representing board members. However, asfar as specific photo themes were concerned, severalsignificant distinctions were found that mark thephotographic content of the management statementsas highly text-dependent. For instance, there wasa significant difference between the British CEO’sstatements and the British Chairman’s statementswith respect to pictures exclusively portraying thechief executive of the company. It seems plausible toexpect that any photographs of individual messengerswould refer to the person that is actually responsiblefor sending the statement; thus, it would be confusingto have a picture of the chairman in the CEO’sstatement and vice versa. This sender-relatedreasoning can also account for the fact that theDutch-English and British CEO’s statements on theone hand and the British Chairman’s statementson the other hand differed significantly in theirreferences to the “chairman” theme. Since supervisorydirectors are integrated in a separate board in theNetherlands and since the British Chairmen arealready represented in their own statements, it isperhaps not surprising that the Dutch-English andBritish CEO’s statements contained no pictures ofthe chairman at all. Because the Dutch-English andBritish annual reports in the present study containboth pictures of individuals and groups, a lessexplicit explanation can be given for the significantlyhigher frequency of the collective “all executiveboard members” theme in the Dutch-English CEO’sstatements, where the CEO was often projected asthe representative of a group of executive directors.Apart from picturing the chief officer and his/herexecutive team as senders of the message, suchcollective pictures (typically of conventionally dressed,trustworthy managers) might have been included forthe purpose of adding to the reliability and credibilityof the corporate annual report [23], which originatedin a small country where “multinationals are watchedclosely in the context of a vulnerable, open economy”[45, p. 286].

The analysis of photographic themes revealed—espe-cially in the introductory discoursal statements—thatpicture content refers predominantly to the senderof the statement and less so to the text content.An important reason for this finding may be that


a photograph of the sender “makes it as easy aspossible for the reader to interact in imagination” withthe CEO or the Chairman concerned and to believethe words he or she is addressing to the readers[14, p. 35]. As both the introductory Dutch-EnglishCEO’s statements and the British Chairman’sstatements aim to establish a personal reader-senderrelationship, a sender portrait would seem to be ahighly effective way of achieving this.

Differences in Photo Themes: Employees: The presentanalysis indicated that significant differences wereobserved for two specific themes related to theworkforce: the “male employee” theme and the “femaleemployee” theme. Compared to the Dutch-EnglishCEO’s statements, a significantly higher numberof British CEO’s statements contained the “maleemployee” theme. Moreover, the British CEO’sstatements reflected a significant overrepresentationof the “female employee” theme. These substantialdifferences are difficult to explain when only regardingthe separate, gender-specific themes. Four of the sixBritish CEO’s statements that contained pictures ofmale employees also portrayed female employees. Thetwo companies that did not show female employeesin their CEO’s statements, (i.e., a diversified financecorporation and a home improvement retailer) weregenerally depicted as a male-operated organization.Here, the significant variation for the “male employee”and “female employee” themes in particular might notnecessarily be related to a cross-cultural differencein itself. A possible clarification may be providedby combining the results for employee-relatedphoto themes, for instance by looking at theresults for the thematic category “Employees.” Thisindicates that British CEO’s statements includedemployee-related photographs significantly more oftenthan Dutch-English CEO’s statements as a means ofportraying the people actually operating the companyrepresented in the annual report. In combination withthe management-related pictures, the photographsof employees in action seem to serve the purpose ofpersonifying the company and illustrating its coreidentity, especially in forewords by British CEOs (seealso [6]).

Differences in Photo Themes: Workplace: A finalsignificant difference with respect to photographiccontent involves the category of clustered themesrelated to workplace. Compared to both theDutch-English CEO’s statements and the BritishChairman’s statements, the British CEO’s statementsshowed an overrepresentation of the use of picturesdepicting work floor, service area, or equipment.Together with the employee-related photographs,these workplace-related images would seem tocontribute to the visual expression of the company’sprofile and its operational locations (see also [6]).It seems to be the case that the combination ofphotographic themes referring to employees and

workplace is of particular rhetorical relevance withinthe British CEO’s statements. This implication issupported by de Groot’s finding that, different fromboth Dutch-English CEO’s and British Chairman’sstatements, British CEO’s statements need to providea more elaborate strategic account of group-leveloperations which should inform and convinceshareholders primarily [6]. Tangible images of peopleand locations involved in the actions described withinthe text may well make a valuable contributionto these rhetorical functions in the British CEO’sstatements.

Relationship Between Text Themes and PhotoThemes Across the Statement Types Returningto previous studies on the relationship between textand images in professional communication (e.g.,[20], [22], [35]), it can be concluded that indeedtextual content and photographic content cooperatewithin the Dutch-English and British managementstatements. And in the Dutch-English and BritishCEO’s statements and the British Chairman’sstatements, the text-photo association primarilycomprised the identification of the presumed author(s)of the text message. An iconic representation of theCEO, the chairman, or several executive directorswas generally included in order to personify themessage conveyed through the text (see also [6]). Inaddition, the British CEO’s statements were observedto contain relatively many illustrations that werethematically related to textual themes incorporatedin the full text. For example, they incorporatedphotos with workplace-related themes that referredto sites explicitly mentioned in the text in relation tothe description of particular operational activities.Informants in de Groot’s study explained that suchtext-photography relations are especially usefulwhen communicating with private shareholders ornonfinancial stakeholders, who may prefer to relyon less technical and more concrete expressions ofinformation [6].

Furthermore, the fact that the text content inDutch-English statements is rather plainly illustratedmay be caused by the fact that the annual reportin the Netherlands is above all considered tobe a formal financial document incorporating acomprehensive number of factual data [6]. Moreover,some Dutch-English statements only comprise shortperformance summaries which do not leave muchroom for visual illustrations. This last argumentmight also be a plausible explanation for the limiteduse of pictures in the British Chairman’s statements,in which photographic content was almost alwaysexclusively focused on the sender-related “chairman”theme. In addition, the chairman’s independentprofessional mandate might account for the restricteduse of company-related illustrations for textualinformation. Contrary to the Dutch-English CEO’sstatements and the British Chairman’s statements,


the British CEO’s statements included many picturesthat either directly or indirectly referred to thecontent of the accompanying text. As was discussedabove, the photographs of the CEO personified thesender of the message, whereas the photographsof employees and workplace either identified thecompany or displayed key events that had takenplace in the year about which the CEO was reporting.Apart from the illustrative opportunities offered bythe strategic overview of operations in the BritishCEO’s statements, there may be another reason forthe extensive use of pictures in these texts. Theyare commonly part of an annual report or annualreview that is not merely regarded as a financialcommunication instrument but that is also relevantas a corporate brochure [6]. Visual illustrations of thecompany and its core activities are, thus, an efficientmeans to reach a (secondary) broad audience with ageneral interest in the company.

DISCUSSION

The general implication that can be drawn from theabove is that the Dutch-English and British-Englishmanagement statements are not generically identicalas far as substance is concerned. In spite of somegeneral overlap in textual and photographic content,the many subtle significant variations in both textthemes and photographic themes suggest that (1) theBritish CEO’s statements and the British Chairman’sstatements are not generic equivalents and that(2) the Dutch-English and the British managerialforewords also differ generically. With regard tothe distinctions in textual substance, much of thediversity observed seems to stem from the fact thatthe supposed writers of the texts, the CEO’s andchairmen, fulfill distinct functions within Dutch andBritish organizations. And as for the distinctionsin photographic substance, it seems as if BritishCEO’s statements in particular tend to focus onvisual representations of the company’s profile andits performance. These results are largely consistentwith the findings of Nickerson and de Groot [7], whoused a smaller sample of 2001 annual reports fromthe Netherlands and the UK in a structural analysisof the three types of statements. They also concludedthat the Dutch-English CEO’s statement, the BritishCEO’s statement, and the British Chairman’sstatements can best be regarded as different texttypifications (i.e., genres). Furthermore, the resultsof this corpus analysis are congruent with the basicgenre assumption that the thematic, structural, andlexico-grammatical nature of texts strongly dependson the communicative purposes, the participants, anddiscourse communities that use them, [11], [12], [28].Findings revealed that contextual references helpedto explain any significant differences in thematiccontent across the three statement types (e.g.,communicative purpose of the text, reader audience,the sender’s professional function within thecompany, socio-political issues, and communicativepurpose of photographs (see [6])).

For researchers in particular, the present studyprovides a comprehensive framework for thecontent analysis of texts and pictures within thecontext-based genres that were analyzed, anda corpus approach proved an invaluable tool infacilitating the analysis of a large body of individualtext realizations and in uncovering something aboutthose underlying text-genres. Still, a limitation ofthe study involves the investigation of the threestatement types as independent documents. As thetwo British statements usually appear in succeedingorder within one annual report, they might not beas independent as they were here assumed to be. Itwould, therefore, be interesting to analyze the BritishCEO’s statements and the Chairman’s statementswithin single British annual reports and to determineto what extent they are actually interdependent.Another challenging aspect of this investigationderives from its focus on content-related differencesbetween Dutch-English and British statements,without testing what the effects of these differencesmight be for the international readers of thesetexts. Especially since the managerial statements inDutch-English and British annual reports appearedto be significantly different, the next step would be toanalyze the response of international stakeholders tothese differences. Moreover, for annual reports, whichneed to reach the investors on which the companyis financially dependent, it would seem crucial totest the communicative efficiency of its contents.Experimental research, measuring the communicativeeffect of the substance included within the threetypes of statements from the viewpoint of actualstakeholders, would therefore be a useful addition tocorpus-based studies of this type in the future.

For instructors teaching in intercultural businesscommunication studies as well as for practitionersengaging in intercultural professional communication,this study showed that both historically definedconventions and current affairs may be influentialwith regard to the thematic content of texts inannual reports printed in two different businesscommunities. Accordingly, the results of the analysisimply that sensitivity to contextual factors is crucialin working toward a better understanding of thetexts used in multicultural discourse situations. Anawareness of context-related aspects that influencethe content and form of a genre may preventmiscommunication or communication breakdown.Moreover, this investigation has highlighted thebasic context-text relationship for a widely read andinfluential communication instrument that has beenscrutinized only to a limited extent in classrooms,research articles, or business practices so far. In theincreasingly globalizing markets, the annual reportis a crucial genre for large multinational companies,used to inform and recruit international investorsand their other stakeholders like new employees.Drawing on Luzón, we would like to argue here thatpractitioners and educators should carefully considerthe type of context-text relationships that we have


uncovered in this study, not only when seeking toinvest in an unfamiliar financial market, but also

when preparing others for a future internationalcareer [46].

APPENDIX A

This appendix provides all 97 registered text themes (see Table V), distributed across CEO’s statements inannual reports by Dutch corporations (NL CEO) and CEO’s and Chairman’s statements (BR CEO, BR Chair,respectively) in annual reports by British corporations.

TABLE VALL REGISTERED TEXT THEMES


APPENDIX B

This appendix provides all 23 registered photographic themes (see Table VI), distributed across CEO’s state-ments in annual reports by Dutch corporations (NL CEO) and CEO’s and Chairman’s statements (BR CEO, BRChair, respectively) in annual reports by British corporations.

TABLE VIALL REGISTERED PHOTOGRAPHIC

THEMES

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Elizabeth B. de Groot is a Ph.D. candidate at the Business Communication Studies Department of the Radboud University

Nijmegen and the Center for Language Studies in the Netherlands. She holds Masters degrees in Organizational Communication

Studies and in English.

Hubert Korzilius is Assistant Professor of Methodology and Statistics in the Department of Business Communication Studies,

Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands. He has published on a diversity of subjects in the fields of methodology,

multilingual and intercultural communication, and document design.

Catherine Nickerson worked for many years at the Business Communication Studies Department and Centre for Language

Studies, Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands. She is currently an Associate Professor at the Alliance Business Academy,

Bangalore, India and an Associate Editor for the Journal of Business Communication.

Marinel Gerritsen holds the Christine Mohrmann Chair in Business Communication Studies and the Centre for Language Studies

at the Radboud University Nijmegen. Her business communication research is primarily focused on the differences between

cultures in communication, the impact that this has on intercultural communication, and the use of English as a lingua franca

and as an international language in Europe.

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