 A critical genre analysis of corporate MD&A report narratives: A review on oil and gas companies

Abstract

Non-financial data has steadily risen to prominence as a means for shareholder to assess the worth of businesses. The corporate annual reports are a communicative genre created by professionals. Many linguistic research on this genre have been undertaken over time from differing viewpoints. Management's Discussion and Analysis (MD&A) narratives in company annual reports holds critical details for investors and analysts. Using the critical genre analysis theory as a framework, this study will look at how corporate discourses is achieved through textual aspects, genre, professional practice, and professional community. After data collection, this study will show that MD&As have distinctive lexical properties in the textual analysis. MD&A's provide a general framework of movements and phases through their genre analysis. Three forms of interdiscursivity and intertextuality functions (embedding, shifting, and combining) offer a challenge to the professional practice of MD&As. MD&A's have a corporate professional culture that is defined by constant absorption, a human-centered value system, an awareness of collaboration, and a self-serving mentality.