CEO statements in sustainability reports: Substantive information or background noise?

•We use sentiment analysis to analyze CEO statements of corporate sustainability reports.•We conduct a longitudinal analysis, of the rhetoric used in these CEO statements.•In contrast to financial reporting there is no discriminatory value of CEO statements.•Unlike in financial reporting we do not find a link between reporting and performance.•This missing link persists despite increased standardization of sustainability reporting.

This paper examines the question of whether corporate sustainability reports can serve as accurate and fair representations of corporate sustainability performance. It presents the results of a sentiment analysis of CEO statements in corporate sustainability reports and corporate financial reports between 2001 and 2010. Making an analogy with corporate financial reporting it is expected that if corporate sustainability reports accurately reflect sustainability performance, then this should be reflected in the rhetoric used. The analysis shows that the rhetoric in the CEO statements of sustainability reports is indicative of impression management rather than accountability, despite increasing standardization of sustainability reporting.