Argumentation and socially questionable business practices: The case of employee downsizing in corporate annual reports

► The research focuses on how questionable business practices are discursively constructed in corporate economic/financial talk. ► The case study on downsizing identified five strategies: rationalisation, normalisation, inevitability, emotional/moral distancing and moralisation. ► The scale and frequency of the undertaking may have an impact on whether the company integrates expressions of feeling or a sense of 'duty' in the text. ► Even if the moralisation strategy remained incomplete, it can still be seen as opening up a potential for dissension and change.