Action for transparency-creation – process types and participant roles in IR policies of Danish, Finnish and Italian companies

In this paper, we study Investor Relations policies of Danish, Finnish, and Italian listed companies. In these publicly available policy texts, companies outline how they intend to communicate with their stakeholders in order to achieve their goals. The aim of this paper is to shed light on the roles given to the companies and their stakeholders in the policies. The focus is on process types (finite verbs) and participant roles. The results of the study show that in the policy texts, transparency-creation is described as a material activity in which the company is the main actor and stakeholders remain in passive roles. However, there are some differences between the data sets: the company is mostly referred to by the company name, but also by we (in the Danish data), and by group (in the Italian data). Our conclusion is that transparency seems to be about doing and saying, indicating that in their policies, at least, the companies seem to take the requirements of openness seriously.fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed

,,In einer Birke an der Szene sitzt ein kleiner Junge [...]." : schwedisch-deutsche falsche Freunde als ein Phänomen interindividueller und individueller Wortschätze

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Communication Practitioners’ Views on Transparency and Its Impact in Finnish Companies

Transparency is a universally accepted communication principle for companies in the 2020’s globalized world. Transparency is considered beneficial because it increases trust among stakeholders, and trust is crucial for the functioning of society and the economy. At the organizational level, transparency is manifested in company policies and practices, as well as in the work of those in charge of communication. Through a qualitative interview study, this article analyzes how communication practitioners working in large Finnish companies view transparency. The analysis shows that while communication practitioners across different companies have common narratives through which an ideal understanding of transparency is produced, they also recognize and address critical tensions between the ideal and practice. The tensions are often connected to regulation: while compliance with rules is highly valued, it is also seen as a resource-intensive and restricting factor, both from business and communication perspectives. Our findings indicate that the cultural ideal of transparency is supported through a shared commitment and sense-making in relevant expert communities and within the companies. The communication practitioners’ commitment also emerges as crucial when they balance between sustaining the transparency ideal and considering the interests and demands of stakeholders and businesses.© 2021 VAKKI ry ja kirjoittajatfi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed

Texts Complying with Societal Pressures : Changing Genres in Finnish Companies’ CSR Reporting

Drawing from the Nordic tradition of sakprosa research, this chapter aims at analysing how generic and intertextual resources are used in Finnish companies’ corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting. Longitudinally, we study the reporting format, that is, whether the companies are reporting about their sustainability issues separately or as part of their annual report. A comparable synchronic approach is applied to intertextuality between reports and sustainability pages on corporate websites. The data stems from companies listed in the Nasdaq Helsinki Stock Exchange (OMX25 index). It comprises CSR reporting from the financial years 2016–2020 and sustainability pages of three companies. The study shows a tendency of keeping the chosen reporting format irrespective of its kind. However, two types of variability occur: selective variability referring to one format change in the investigated time span, and hybridity, combining features of different formats. Three intertextual strategies between the texts of reports and web pages were detected: convergence, adaptation, and divergence. Our results show how choices of reporting format and intertextual strategies are governed by the company context and practices, and also by governance issues and regulation. In this way, the complexity of text-society relationships as postulated by sakprosa research is illustrated in the context of business texts.© Te Author(s) 2023. This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence and indicate if changes were made. Te images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed

Nachhaltigkeitsberichtspraxis in Veränderung : dargestellt an Beispielen deutscher und finnischer Unternehmen

I artikeln granskas tyska och finländska bolags hållbarhetsredovisning och hur EU-direktivet 2014/95/EU har påverkat hållbarhetsredovisningen. Det nya direktivet trädde i kraft från verksamhetsåret 2017 och gör redovisningen av hållbarhetsaspekter tvingande för större bolag. Analysen visar att en majoritet av DAX30- och OMXH25-bolagen för verksamhetsåret 2016 rapporterade hållbarhetsaspekter i en separat rapport, medan en minoritet valde en integrerad rapport där hållbarhetsaspekter kombineras med finansiell information i bolagens årsredovisning. Då bolagen som rapporterade hållbarhetsaspekterna separat år 2016 väljer rapporteringsformat för 2017 förekommer det olika lösningar: Bolag övergår till integrerad rapportering eller fortsätter med en separat rapport. Den separata rapporten förändras i många fall på så sätt att en ny, kompletterande separat rapport introduceras vid sidan av den tidigare rapporten, den tidigare rapporten ersätts av en ny rapport för icke-finansiell information eller den tidigare rapporten förändras mer eller mindre i fråga om titel och/eller innehåll. I vissa fall sker det ingen förändring i hållbarhetsrapporten, utan informationen som det nya direktivet kräver inkluderas i bolagets årsredovisning. I artikeln diskuteras textsorten hållbarhetsredovisning som medlem i textsortskolonier, och textsortens tendens till förändring eller stabilitet reflekteras mot den neoinstitutionella organisationsteorins beskrivningar av tvingande, imiterande och normativ isomorfism.fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed

Students’ Perception of the Development of Generic Competencies in a User Innovation Course Context – A Longitudinal Study Comparing Different Teaching Modes in Higher Education

The development of generic competencies relevant to graduates lies at the heart of higher education. Generic competencies development is challenging in today’s VUCA – volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous – world, and the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated this challenge as educators were forced to change from classroom to online teaching with very short notice. In this paper, we analyse how the change in teaching mode influences students’ perception of the development of their generic competencies. Our longitudinal data consists of five years of student feedback from a multidisciplinary and practice-oriented user innovation course in a higher education context. We analysed how students perceive their development of specific generic competencies and surprisingly found no statistical differences over the five years studied, not even when moving from blended teaching to a fully online seting. We discuss how the three underlying factors – 1) roots and premises, 2) freedom and independence, and 3) social connectedness and support – enhance the perceived development of generic competencies despite the change in teaching mode, and we conclude with suggestions to business educators.©2023 Association of Business Schools Finland.fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed

Genremönster i 'Ministern har ordet'. Regeringar rapporterar om bolag med statligt ägande

The article deals with the genre consolidated government accounts of state-owned enterprises in Finland and Sweden. More specifically, the study is focused on the subgenre the foreword of the responsible minister, which we label Statement from the Minister in analogy with Statement from the CEO in the related genre corporate annual reports. The primary data consist of Statement from the Minister in Finland and Sweden 2007–2016, thus 20 texts. The main point of departure is a genre analysis based on rhetorical moves and steps in Statement from the CEO (Skulstad 1996, 2002). The three moves are Establishing relationships, Maintaining confidence and Reinforcing the relationships. The analysis shows that the three moves and most of the steps are used in both countries. The differences are found in the realisations where strategies, expectations of future and reassurance are expressed as much in political terms as in economic terms in the analysed data. In the Swedish data, sustainability is prioritized during the whole period and connected to the political ambition to be a real model. The subgenre has found its form and content in Sweden since it exists in the present format since 1999. In the Finnish data, the variation is wider as the subgenre was introduced as late as 2007. Since it was taken out of use due to a change of the reporting format in 2017, it did not get the chance to institutionalise as a subgenre to consolidated government accounts.© 2021 VAKKI ry ja kirjoittajatfi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed

Zur Nachhaltigkeitsberichterstattung deutscher und finnischer börsennotierter Unternehmen

Der Beitrag 1 stellt eine Untersuchung der Nachhaltigkeitsberichterstattung börsennotierter Unternehmen im DAX 30 und im OMX Helsinki 25 vor. Das Ziel ist es, das Berichtsformat, die Berichtssprache(n) und die Berichtsbezeichnungen zu analysieren und zu vergleichen sowie den Nachhaltigkeitsbericht als Mitglied von Textsortenkolonien in seinem Umfeld von Varianten, Hybriden und verwandten Textsorten zu beschreiben. Die Teilkorpora weisen sowohl Ähnlichkeiten als auch Unterschiede auf. Es zeichnet sich das Bild einer dynamischen Textsorte ab.©2020 Lit Verlag.fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed

Genremönster i Ministern har ordet : Regeringar rapporterar om bolag med statligt ägande

The article deals with the genre consolidated government accounts of state-owned enter-prises in Finland and Sweden. More specifically, the study is focused on the subgenre the foreword of the responsible minister, which we label Statement from the Minister in anal-ogy with Statement from the CEO in the related genre corporate annual reports. The pri-mary data consist of Statement from the Minister in Finland and Sweden 2007–2016, thus 20 texts. The main point of departure is a genre analysis based on rhetorical moves and steps in Statement from the CEO (Skulstad 1996, 2002). The three moves are Establishing relationships, Maintaining confidence and Reinforcing the relationships. The analysis shows that the three moves and most of the steps are used in both countries. The differ-ences are found in the realisations where strategies, expectations of future and reassur-ance are expressed as much in political terms as in economic terms in the analysed data. In the Swedish data, sustainability is prioritized during the whole period and connected to the political ambition to be a real model. The subgenre has found its form and content in Sweden since it exists in the present format since 1999. In the Finnish data, the variation is wider as the subgenre was introduced as late as 2007. Since it was taken out of use due to a change of the reporting format in 2017, it did not get the chance to institutionalise as a subgenre to consolidated government accounts

”Fuck sådant.” Snabba cash -romaanin monikielisistä voima- ja haukkumasanoista sekä niiden suomen-, saksan- ja englanninkielisistä käännöksistä

In this article, we analyze multilingual swearwords and insults in Jens Lapidus’ novel Snabba cash (2006) in order to discover how these character- and milieu-constructing colloquialisms have been translated into Finnish, German and English. We are particularly curious about whether the multilingualism and taboo language of the original are retained or normalized in the translations, and whether the solutions match the instructions of the author, which were exceptionally also available. The results show that both multilingualism and taboo language are important features that are mostly reconstructed in the translations although the solutions vary on the basis of language, form and semantics.In this article, we analyze multilingual swearwords and insults in Jens Lapidus’ novel Snabba cash (2006) in order to discover how these character- and milieu-constructing colloquialisms have been translated into Finnish, German and English. We are particularly curious about whether the multilingualism and taboo language of the original are retained or normalized in the translations, and whether the solutions match the instructions of the author, which were exceptionally also available. The results show that both multilingualism and taboo language are important features that are mostly reconstructed in the translations although the solutions vary on the basis of language, form and semantics