The influence of cultural background and means of communication on CSR disclosures: a comparative analysis of Lamborghini, McLaren, and Porsche.

The present research examines how cultural background and means of communication influence the dissemination of corporate social responsibility (CSR) information. In today’s global context, companies increasingly tend to rely on both corporate reports and webpages as preferred platforms to disclose their environmental, ethical, philanthropic, and economic commitments. However, far from being uniform, CSR disclosure practices vary according to the cultural setting in which companies operate, and the medium used to convey CSR information. Therefore, to investigate these dynamics, the present study explores the CSR communication strategies of three major companies in the automotive industry - Lamborghini, McLaren, and Porsche. For the purpose of this research, CSR reports and webpages were collected from the company’s official websites and analysed by means of corpus linguistics tools, including semantic and word-class tagging as well as wordlists. This approach allowed the identification of recurring patterns and distinctive linguistic features across the different datasets. The results of the present analysis reveal both similarities and divergences in the way CSR is communicated by the companies analysed, thus reflecting the influence of both cultural background and communication medium on disclosure practices.