A Comparative Analysis Of CSR Reports Of Chinese And American Oil Companies From Transitivity

Oil industry is one of the important and large industries,and the healthy development of oil companies is vital to the society.In order to ensure the healthy development,oil companies need to fulfill their corporate social responsibility(CSR,for short),which requires that enterprises bear the responsibility for stakeholders,employees,consumers,communities,and environment in the course of pursuing profits.The performance of the corporate is presented through CSR reports.Fulfilling CSR and correct preparation of CSR reports can help enterprises to establish a good corporate image and promote their sustainable development.Transitivity is a semantic system with conceptual function.It plays a significant role in expressing human beings' experience of the world.Transitivity analysis can reflect the ideational function of a language and the processes,states and relationships of things in real life through the analysis of different processes,participants in the processes,and circumstances associated with the processes.It has been widely applied in analysis of literary works,public speech and news reports as an analytical tool.However,there are few analysis of CSR reports from the perspective of transitivity.The author tries to make a comparative analysis of CSR reports of the Chinese and American oil companies to reveal the similarities and differences in terms of transitivity and the deep meaning of the reports.Based on this,the author chooses the 2016 CSR reports of China National Petroleum Corporation(CNPC,for short)and Exxon Mobil(EM,for short)as texts,with the Carroll's Pyramid of CSR as framework.A comparative analysis of CSR reports of Chinese and American oil companies is made from the perspective of transitivity in terms of economic responsibility,legal responsibility,ethical responsibility and philanthropic responsibility in order to reveal transitivity features of CSR reports in terms of language use and deep meaning and to find out the similarities and differences in fulfilling CSR between CNPC and EM so as to provide reference for enterprises to better prepare CSR reports and fulfill CSR.According to Carroll's pyramid model,the author calculates the percentage of the six processes which are material process,mental process,relational process,existential process,behavioral process and verbal process in the four responsibilities and finds out the distribution of the processes.From the overall reports,it is found that in CNPC report,material process and mental process are primary while relational process and verbal process are minor.In EM report,material process and relational process are primary while mental process and verbal process are minor.The frequency of existential process is the least,and there is no behavioral process in both reports.The highest frequency of material process in both reports indicates that that the two reports are narrative texts.The similarities and differences in the reports are mainly reflected by the quantity,characteristics and distribution of material,mental,relational and verbal processes.The large number of material process shows that both CSR reports of CNPC and EM have a strong sense of taking action,engagement and firm determination in performing CSR.But in selecting actions in terms of material process,the frequency of verbs indicating enhancement and promotion in CNPC report is much higher than in EM report,and it can be seen that CNPC focuses on performing CSR,strengthening and upgrading the performance effect,while there are words indicating various actions of material process in EM report,which shows that EM focuses on the action and measures that they take.The mental process in CNPC report is simple in form,most of which present their emphasis on performance,indicating their firm determination to fulfill CSR.The mental process in EM report come in various forms,which shows that EM is better at expressing ideas and emotions,and readers can easily and clearly figure out the attitude of the company.The frequency of the relational process shows the close relationship between fulfilling responsibility and the development of society and corporates,but the two companies differ in their focus.Much emphasis is put on relational process in CNPC report to describe the importance of fulfilling responsibility,indicating that CNPC pays much attention to it.And EM emphasizes their responsibilities and their goals through relational process,indicating a clearer purpose.Both CNPC and EM reinforce the credibility of the reports through verbal process.The verbal processes appear in ethical and philanthropic responsibilities in CNPC report,while they appear in four types of responsibility in EM report,indicating that EM is willing to collect and adopt opinions from different channels,then render comments.In addition,their differences are reflected in the identity of the sayers.The evaluation and respondents of CNPC are from the beneficiaries and company's internal staff.The sayers in EM report are internal staff and outsiders from different backgrounds.It can be seen that EM is adept at adopting a wide range of views from different social backgrounds and is more extensive in communication than CNPC does.Appropriate adoption of external evaluation can increase the persuasion of the report and increase the recognition of the report.This study is hoped to reveal the deeper meanings of CSR and the two reports through analyzing each process in the reports and to provide a better reference for companies to fulfill their CSR and write CSR report,to provide new perspectives and scientific basis for readers to better understand the reports.