CEO-Speak

In a post-Enron world in which corporate accountability and ethical behaviour have become increasingly important, Joel Amernic and Russell Craig consider the implications of the corporate language of leadership. Through a rhetorical analysis of the speeches and letters of chief executive officers, annual reports to shareholders, press releases, and company newsletters and websites, Amernic and Craig show that CEOs are elitist and exclusionary propagators of an often biased stream of discourse. CEO-Speak explores the metaphors and persuasive strategies used by corporate leaders at Enron, Microsoft, AOL-TimeWarner, General Electric, IBM, Nortel, Canadian National Railways, Andersen, Disney, and Alcan-Pechiney-Alusuisse. Amernic and Craig find that CEO-speak evokes an ideology of neo-liberalism, extreme individualism, hyper-competition, and global capitalism. They examine the internet as a powerful new platform for CEO-speak and show that CEOs are frequently presented as heroes engaged in "the war of business" who can effect astonishing miracles of financial performance and re-invention. In contesting the notion that accounting is objective, CEO-Speak serves as an introduction to the fundamental controversies and ambiguities in corporate accountability and provides rich examples of the excesses of corporate communication. The authors argue that the language of CEOs raises alarm bells regarding the ethos of corporate leadership and urge the business press, academia, and the accounting and auditing community to take a more critical approach.