Neutralising Responsibility: A Critical Analysis of an Airline’s Climate Disclosures

Eljas Johansson

doi:10.34190/irt.21.114

Neutralising Responsibility: A Critical Analysis of an Airline’s Climate Disclosures

Abstract

Sustainability reporting provides companies with a medium through which they can communicate their non-financial impacts to stakeholders. The airline industry has been much at the centre of the climate change debate in recent years, which is why it is hardly surprising that airlines seek to take a proactive stance in such reporting. This study critically assesses how an airline based in the Scandinavian region constructs sustainability discourse in relation to climate impact in its corporate reporting to stakeholders. The paper uniquely approaches this question by drawing upon thematic analysis combined with an examination of the text’s grammatical meanings. Overall, the findings demonstrate that the company’s climate discourse is characterised by optimistic forward-looking statements and justifications, realised by techniques of neutralisation, whose purpose is to rationalise and legitimise the company’s adverse climate impact. This short paper contributes to the still relatively underexamined research area of airline sustainability reporting by concentrating on the climate disclosures and responding to the lack of latent analysis in this context. This paper’s findings are intended to stimulate the discussion amongst academics and practitioners on how sustainability is communicated in corporate annual reporting to make it more meaningful.