CEO talk under scrutiny: visibility and rhetorical impression management in sustainability narratives

Purpose We investigate the influence of corporate visibility on rhetorical impression management (IM) in sustainability reporting (SR) CEO letters. By analyzing both general visibility (sensitive industry membership) and issue visibility (sustainability controversies), we aim to provide insights into how managers utilize linguistic style in response to visibility pressures. Design/methodology/approach Using a sample of 2,139 SR CEO letters, we examine functional, affective and cognitive linguistic elements and identify three prominent style profiles: formal-analytical, assertive and defensive. Multivariate regression is employed to test how general and issue visibility affect these profiles. Findings CEOs in less visible industries tend to show a higher propensity for assertive language to project leadership and control. In contrast, companies with higher general visibility tend to use more analytical language, suggesting that formally and logically aligning with public information seems to be a pragmatic way for CEOs in sensitive industries to establish credibility and legitimacy. However, when these CEOs face sustainability controversies, they step in head-on to contextualize the issues in a reactive manner to contain legitimacy threats. Originality/value Our research offers a fine-grained linguistic focus on IM in SR CEO letters, highlighting prominent linguistic style patterns and underlying drivers. We show that the identified language styles are not mutually exclusive but are triggered by distinct legitimacy concerns. We explicitly consider interdependency between the CEO letter and the main report and assess readability as a derivative of primary stylistic choice. The sample allows us to make inferences on how capital market differences affect CEO language postures.