Riassunto analitico
This study deals with the notion of commitment to corporate social responsibility (CSR) as conceived by the principal national railway operators in the EU community.
The practice of CSR reporting has gained momentum over the last 20 years as one of the instruments that big corporations strongly rely on to enhance their corporate image, credibility and – in the long run – profitability. For this reason, stakeholders and society at large are increasingly influenced by the discursive practices employed by enterprises to communicate their corporate approaches to environmental and societal matters. After exploring the content overview and the visual layout of a corpus of CSR disclosures drafted by EU national railway companies in 2017 (referring to the previous financial year), a variety of lexical patterns used to express future priorities are contrastively explored in terms of shared conceptions, divergences, and peculiarities. National railway companies show a diversified degree of commitment to CSR issues – mostly expressed in terms of strong resolution or continuity of action – by giving birth to rather individualized conceptualizations which do not strictly depend on the specific area of operation in the EU community. Judging the degree of commitment in a still non-mandatory framework at an EU level aims at allowing a better understanding of CSR reporting performance in the rail sector in the dawn of an upcoming era of compulsory non-financial reporting practices under Directive 2014/95/EU.
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Abstract
This study deals with the notion of commitment to corporate social responsibility (CSR) as conceived by the principal national railway operators in the EU community.
The practice of CSR reporting has gained momentum over the last 20 years as one of the instruments that big corporations strongly rely on to enhance their corporate image, credibility and – in the long run – profitability. For this reason, stakeholders and society at large are increasingly influenced by the discursive practices employed by enterprises to communicate their corporate approaches to environmental and societal matters. After exploring the content overview and the visual layout of a corpus of CSR disclosures drafted by EU national railway companies in 2017 (referring to the previous financial year), a variety of lexical patterns used to express future priorities are contrastively explored in terms of shared conceptions, divergences, and peculiarities. National railway companies show a diversified degree of commitment to CSR issues – mostly expressed in terms of strong resolution or continuity of action – by giving birth to rather individualized conceptualizations which do not strictly depend on the specific area of operation in the EU community. Judging the degree of commitment in a still non-mandatory framework at an EU level aims at allowing a better understanding of CSR reporting performance in the rail sector in the dawn of an upcoming era of compulsory non-financial reporting practices under Directive 2014/95/EU.
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