Framing Legitimacy in CSR : A Corpus of C hinese and A merican Petroleum Company CSR Reports and Preliminary Analysis (2022)

Abstract: We examine how Chinese and American oil companies use the gain- and loss-framed BUILDING source domain to legitimize their business in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) reports. Gain and loss frames can create legitimacy because they can ethically position an issue. We will focus on oil companies in China and the U.S. because different socio-cultural contexts in these two countries can potentially lead to different legitimation strategies in CSR reports, which can shed light on differences in Chinese and American CSR. All of the oil companies in our data are on the Fortune 500 list (2020). The results showed that Chinese oil companies used BUILDING metaphors more frequently than American oil companies. The most frequent keyword in Chinese CSRs “build” highlights environmental achievements in compliance with governments’ policies. American CSRs often used the metaphorical verb “support” to show their alignment with environmental policies and the interests of different stakeholders. The BUILDING source domain was used more often as gain frames in both Chinese and American CSR reports to show how oil companies create benefits for different stakeholders.

## introduction the concept of organizational legitimacy is defined as "a generalized perception or assumption that the actions of an entity are desirable, proper or appropriate within some socially constructed system of norms, values, beliefs, and definitions" @xcite . the carbon-intensive sector, particularly the petroleum industry, has a potential legitimacy gap because its business contributes to environmental impacts. this gap might motivate petroleum companies to use a range of legitimation strategies. of all types of corporate discourses, corporate social responsibility (csr) reports serve as an intriguing discourse for exploring how corporations legitimize their environmental performance. due to more discretion in terms of content and template, csr reports can exploit various means to construct reality. therefore, csr reports can provide more clues regarding how companies legitimize their business operations compared to other corporate documents. this study examines how legitimation strategies are used in the environmental sections of corporate social responsibility (csr) reports produced by petroleum companies to justify their environmental practice. ## corpus our study focuses on csr reports published by american and chinese petroleum companies on fortune 500 (2020) because these petroleum companies are key players in the petroleum industries by revenue in their respective countries. stakeholders expect higher accountability and transparency in their csr reports. in light of this, these companies will be cautious about the way they discursively construct the environmental issues in their csr reports. attitudes demonstrated in their csr reports should be a relatively accurate reflection of their attitudes on social issues. the chinese corpus in our study has a word count of 121,751, and the american corpus is almost double the chinese corpus, with a word count of 266,826. the corpora sizes in our study are demonstrated in ## source domain analysis this study aims to explore how the building source domain is used as gain and loss frames to legitimize the environmental practice of petroleum companies in csr reports. our source domain analysis consists of six steps: 1) determining potential keywords; 2) source domain verification; 3) part of speech (pos) tagging; 4) metaphor identification; 5) identifying gain and loss frames; and 6) identifying the corporate and environmental interests behind gain and loss frames. the first step of our source domain analysis is to determine potential keywords. considering the large size of our corpora, we identified potential source domain keywords using @xcite sampling technique. in total, we collected 49 potential keywords for the source domain of building. as for the source domain verification, we adopted the method proposed by @xcite , which is a comprehensive approach that can be used for a variety of source domains by adding an online dictionary as well as making use of collocation patterns @xcite . as for the online english dictionary, we chose macmillan english dictionary for advanced learners @xcite because this dictionary is one of three dictionaries used by mipvu @xcite , the metaphor identification procedure we adopt in this study. since the mipvu procedure does not cross word-class boundaries when determining the metaphoricality of lexical units, we parsed our data with part of speech (pos) tags before the metaphor identification. the computer tool used for pos tagging is the pos tagging @xcite of stanford corenlp @xcite . after determining the word classes of the source domain keywords in our study, we will then use mipvu @xcite to investigate if a keyword is used metaphorically or not. mivpu identifies a word as a metaphor if its usage in the text shows a cross-domain mapping from its basic meaning to its contextual meaning @xcite . in other words, if a word's meaning in the dictionary is more basic than its meaning in the context, it is identified as a metaphor. 10% of our data (@xmath0. the result indicates the kappa value is 0.8145, showing a strong agreement. previous studies suggest that the gain-framed appeal focuses on the benefits of adopting a particular action, while the loss-framed appeal emphasizes the losses of alternative action (e.g., @xcite @xcite . the criteria for identifying gain and loss frames in our study are to decide if the goal of a sentence is perceived as gaining benefits or avoiding losses. the criteria are demonstrated as follows: a. if the goal of a sentence is perceived as gaining benefits, it is a gain frame. b. if the goal of the sentence is perceived as avoiding losses, it is a loss frame. c. if the goal is perceived as neither gaining benefits or avoiding losses, it is neither the gain nor loss frame. after identifying all the gain and loss frames, we then determine if the identified gain and loss frames were motivated by corporate interests and/or environmental interests. the criteria for identifying corporate interests and environmental interests are as follows: a. if the goal of the frame is perceived as creating corporate benefits, such as generating more profits, creating a safe workplace, improving product quality, or enhancing corporate influence, then the frame is motivated by corporate interests. b. if the goal of the frame is perceived as creating environmental benefits, such as improving environmental conditions or preventing environmental impacts, then the frame is motivated by environmental interests. c. if the goal of the frame is perceived as creating both corporate benefits as well as environmental benefits, then the frame is motivated by a mix of corporate interests and environmental interests. d. if the goal of the frame is perceived as creating neither corporate benefits nor environmental benefits, then the frame is motivated by neither corporate interests nor environmental interests. when all the above metaphor analysis procedures had been finished, we then started to investigate our data to see how building metaphors are used as gain and loss frames to legitimize the environmental practice of american and chinese petroleum companies. ## conclusions in this study, we explored 1) usages of keywords in the source domain of building in acsrs and ccsrs, 2) frequencies in gain and loss frames in acsrs and ccsrs, and 3) motivations for gain and loss frames in acsrs and ccsrs. the topics frequently associated with various interest types were also studied. by addressing all of these issues, we have identified the following legitimation strategies of petroleum companies in chinese and american csr reports as well as differences in csr in china and the u.s. the first legitimation strategy is to use the source domain of building in different time frames so that the construction of an environmental enterprise or society is presented as a staged process. the finding of the first research question indicated that the most frequent building keyword in ccsrs was the verb "build." this building metaphor was often used by ccsrs to construct a petroleum company as an architect to create environmental achievements in compliance with government policies, such as "beautiful china" and the carbon market. the metaphor "build" was employed in the past tense to show that a specific construction stage has been completed, such as building a trading team for carbon emission trading. when the metaphor was used to conceptualize an ambitious goal, such as creating a green enterprise or society, the statement was often future-oriented. in this way, the completion of the ambitious construction was framed as a distant goal. as completion in a specific building stage has been realized, completing the ambitious construction was achievable. the second legitimation strategy is to demonstrate the compliance of corporate activities with social norms. acsrs often used the metaphorical verb "support" to show the petroleum company's alignment with sociallyvalued environmental rules and policies. since the lower part of a building maintains the building's stability and durability, the petroleum companies are represented as fundamental for the implementation of environmental regulations and policies. nevertheless, the supportive attitude was downplayed by juxtaposing environmental goals with energy goals. the absent information about concrete supportive actions can render an oil company's support symbolic. acsrs also used the verb "support" to indicate that the supporting power for environmental solutions comes from governments, businesses, and other stakeholders. in this way, part of the responsibilities of addressing climate change can be transferred to stakeholders and other social groups. by constructing dealing with climate change as a common goal for the oil industry as well as its stakeholders, the potential conflicts between them are reconciled. the fourth strategy is to use nominalization to construct the concept of support as a real entity so that this concept is less challengeable. when addressing the second research question about gain and loss frames, we found that the source domain building was used more often as gain frames. the nominal metaphor "support" was often used as gain frames in acsrs and ccsrs. this metaphor can present the support provided by petroleum companies and the support petroleum companies received as real and necessary. ccsrs tended to use adjectives related to technology to emphasize the technologyoriented approaches to climate change, which were favourable approaches for petroleum companies. some acsrs used the nominal metaphor "support" to show closer attention to stakeholders' support, which could be attributable to their publicly-owned nature. the investigation of topics frequently associated with different interests in ccsrs and acsrs also indicated how petroleum companies achieve legitimacy by accommodating the various interests of stakeholders. the topic of "leadership and management" was used to reconcile the different interests of stakeholders in ccsrs. this topic indicated that mixed interests can be generated by management. one useful way to manage was to build, use, or improve information platforms. by using the metaphor "platform," petroleum companies present the achievements of management as tangible properties for the whole society. as constructing information platforms aligns with china's strong advocacy for information technology, this management approach is thus legitimate according to china's csr. as for acsrs, the topic of "support and help" was employed to accommodate the various interests of stakeholders. this topic suggested that different interests can be created with useful assistance or supportive attitudes. in some cases, the support from petroleum companies comes with strings attached, which allows different interests to be reconciled. both chinese and american oil companies legitimize their core business by juxtaposing climate goals with energy demands. however, chinese oil companies tend to emphasize developing energy to meet domestic demands, as the energy gap in china is relatively wide. american oil companies focus more on global energy demands because the u.s. has become a global energy supplier. these differences also demonstrate different emphases in chinese and american csr.