Scandinavian Journal of Management (2013) 29, 292313

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Argumentation and socially questionable business

practices: The case of employee downsizing in
corporate annual reports
rvi *
Taru Vuontisja

69 Sidney Grove, NE4 5PD, Newcastle Upon Tyne, United Kingdom

KEY WORDS Summary In spite of the fact that the viability of private companies depends on their ability to
Annual report; make profit, CSR research has paid little attention to how questionable business undertakings are
Argumentation; discursively constructed in corporate economic/financial disclosures. This paper investigates
Corporate social these processes in the context of employee downsizing. It identifies a range of argumentation
responsibility; techniques which form a basis for broader strategies: rationalisation, normalisation, inevitability
Critical discourse and emotional/moral distancing, which corporations used to (re)construct a contested business
analysis; practice as a positive, routine management strategy or something that cannot be avoided. The
Downsizing; paper maintains that the scale and frequency of the questionable undertaking may have an
Socially questionable impact on whether the company applies the moralisation strategy, in terms of making an effort to
business undertaking discursively integrate expressions of feeling or a sense of duty in the text. Moreover, the paper
goes on by suggesting that, even if references to these elements remained succinct, their
presence in the text can still be seen as opening up the potential for dissension and change, as
they place the elements of duty and caring in the proximity of the natural laws of neoclassical
economics, such as, the need for profit, unlimited growth and norms of efficiency.
# 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Introduction received considerable media attention and questioned the

The beginning of the twenty-first century has been marked by
a number of corporate scandals involving companies, such as,
Enron, Parmalat and WordCom which have shaken public
confidence in corporations. Moreover, issues such as insider
trading, human right violations, collaboration with regressive
regimes, excessive executive compensation packages and
large restructuring operations have provoked public furore,
* Tel.: +44 0 7578495399.
E-mail address: taru@vuontisjarvi.fsnet.co.uk.
legitimacy of the business undertakings.
This paper is interested in the ways in which socially
contested business undertakings are discursively constructed
in corporate mainstream economic and financial disclosures.
Special attention is paid to how, if at all, the social is
embedded in these disclosures. The starting point of the
study is that a central part of building social acceptability for
controversial corporate actions takes place through argu-
mentation. The paper is based on the belief that, by con-
structing corporate action in a certain way, business is not
only responding to the expectations of society but can also
influence the way it is understood in social reality. As Fou-
cault (1974, p. 49) suggests, discourses should not be treated

0956-5221/$ see front matter # 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.scaman.2013.01.003
Argumentation and socially questionable business practices
as a group of signs, but as practices that systematically form
the objects of which they speak. Concepts are developed,
therefore, not only through actual processes of practical
change but they can also be talked into being and substan-
tively shaped by discourse (Chouliaraki & Fairclough, 1999).
From this point of view, the use of language does not only
reflect social practices and institutional forms, but also
contributes to (re)producing and sustaining those (Fair-
clough, 1992; Wetherell & Potter, 1992).
The paper intends to add to the stream of research which
has applied corporate social responsibility (CSR) or ethical
perspective and focused on the discursive construction of
questionable corporate practices (see Joutsenvirta & Vaara,
2009; La msa, 2001; Makela & Nasi, 2010; Rhodes, Pullen, & institutionalised management practice, taken for granted by
Clegg, 2010; Siltaoja & Vehkapera , 2010). The core material
to these studies has been media texts and management or
staff interviews, whereas the construction of socially con-
tentious operations as part of corporate economic and finan-
cial disclosures has received little attention. This, even if the
presentation of a socially contentious issue, which has been
made as a part of corporate core financialeconomic talk,
can be seen as an important element in demonstrating the
extent to (if at all) the organisation discursively integrates
social aspects into its mainstream strategies and policies.
The juxtaposition of social and ethical aspects with financial
objectives in the context of questionable business practice
may also demonstrate the existence of a discursive struggle
in the text and, therefore, the potential for resistance and
change. The corporate annual report (AR) was selected as the
principal document, which constructs the corporate eco-
nomicfinancial image (see Botosan, 1997; Gray, Meek, &
Roberts, 1995b).
The research question is: Through which argumentation
strategies and techniques do companies build acceptability
into a questionable business practice in their core economic
and financial disclosures and how these contribute to the
(re)construction of social reality and power relationships?
The research draws from Perelman and Olbrechts-Tytecas
(2006, see also Perelman, 2005) The New Rhetoric and from
critical discourse analysis, especially from authors influenced
by Foucault, such as, Fairclough (1992, 1995) and Livesey
(see e.g. 2002a, 2002b).
By questionable this paper refers to a socially contro-
versial or unethical action conducted by a firm. The research
draws from concepts and models of contemporary CSR
research. CSR can be understood as a companys attitude
towards and impact upon the economic, environmental and
social framework in which it is embedded (Crane & Matten,
2004). The quest for a common definition for CSR has, how-
ever, remained ambiguous and elusive (Burchell & Cook,
2006; Nielsen & Thomsen, 2007) leaving space for differing
interpretations as to what it actually means in theory and
practice. The focus here is on a particular case of question-
able business undertaking, namely employee downsizing, a
managerial practice which has provoked much public furore
and considerable debate in the popular press (Orlando, 1999;
Van Buren, 2000). Downsizing is seen to be here typically a
questionable business undertaking which encompasses many
diverse, often conflicting discourses. Moreover, in a similar
way to the case of the CSR concept, there is no common
understanding or consensus on what exactly CSR means in this
context, or the appropriate degree of attention which needs
293
to be paid to the economic and social aspects of the concept
(see Ma kela & Nasi, 2010). Concerns over downsizing and
ethics are, however, usually related to whether a decision to
downsize is justifiable and how the most affected stake-
holders, generally acknowledged to be employees and the
local community, are treated (see e.g. La msa , 2001; Van
Buren, 2000).
Prior to the late 1980s, employee downsizing was seen as
an aberration from normal organisational functioning and
a last-ditch effort to thwart organisational demise or to
temporarily adjust to a cyclical downturn in sales (Cameron,
Freeman, & Mishra, 1993, p. 20). Over the past couple of
decades, employee downsizing has, however, emerged as an
managers (see McKinley, Sanchez, & Schick, 1995). Globalisa-
tion, increased competition, and the spread of financial and
corporate governance models that emphasize shareholder
value have marked a change in attitude towards downsizing,
in that it is no longer considered to be a socially dubious activity
but a legitimate way to produce value for the shareholders
(Budros, 1997; Erkama & Vaara, 2010; Hirsch & DeSoucey,
2006). Furthermore, on the basis of their review of contem-
porary management and macroeconomics literature, McKinley,
Mone and Barker (1998) argue that downsizing is seen as a way
for healthy firms to become more productive and efficient.
The critics have, however, attributed downsizing to
greed, ineptness or the tyranny of improving shareholder
value (see Boxberg, 2005; Fagiano, 1996; Miller, 1998).
Downsizing has not only been suggested to have a negative
impact on individual life and whole communities (see Childs,
1997; Orlando, 1999), but has also been seen to lead to
mechanistic relationships at workplaces. Stein (1997, p.
232) has, for example, described downsizing as a non-
physical act of violence in the workplace, in which people
are experienced and experience themselves treated as
things, as commodities, as objects, producers of products,
and themselves parts of production lines.
The paper focuses on companies operating in Finland and
on the reports produced for the year 2005. This year was one
of which had an intensified wave of redundancies in Finland,
partly due to manufacturing companies moving their produc-
tion into low-cost countries (Finnish Ministry of Employment,
2007). Continuous redundancies received considerable
media attention and also prompted high-level politicians
to comment. The then Trade and Industry Minister Antti
Kallioma ki (quoted in Boxberg, 2005) suggested that corpo-
rate directors are driven by obvious greediness and are
guilty of considerable exaggeration. Later on, in the same
year, the then Finnish president Tarja Halonen (2005) called
for business to act in a responsible way when restructuring
and disapproved of the selfishness, short-sightedness and
narrowness of the quartile economy.
What does Corporate Social Responsibility mean in prac-
tice when a company is producing a considerable profit,
distributes noteworthy dividends to its shareholders,
stock options to its directors and at the same time lays
off its employees? Or when profitable jobs are cut off and
moved elsewhere? (Halonen, 2005)
The paper starts by describing the papers contribution to
the previous research and introducing the related conceptual
framework. It goes ahead by presenting the methodological
294
approach, together with the analysis process in practice.
Thereafter, results of the analysis of the corporate disclo-
sures on ARs are presented, starting from argumentation
techniques and, on the basis of those, progressing into
distinguishing broader argumentation strategies and suggest-
ing their power implications. The paper concludes by drawing
together the main results, discussing the potential for dis-
sension and change in this context and presenting some ideas
for further research.
Discursive CSR research and questionable
corporate behaviour
Research with regard to questionable business behaviour
goes back in time and has included case studies, comparisons
of firms in diverse industries and efforts to provide theories or
longitudinal models of corporate illegality (see Baucus &
Near, 1991). Studies applying CSR or ethical perspective
which aim at revealing the discursive construction of ques-
tionable business operations have, however, been relatively
recent. Scholars have focused on the role of the media and
have reconstructed the framework used for (il)legitimising a
particular case of contestable business operation, such as,
cartels (Siltaoja & Vehkapera , 2010), or a specific corporate
investment project (Joutsenvirta & Vaara, 2009). Those
scholars exploring the discursive construction of downsizing
have focused on media texts or management and staff inter-
views and have suggested that managers tend to emphasize
the primacy of economic rationality and efficiency to justify
downsizing (La msa, 2001; Ma kela
& Nasi, 2010). Makela
and
Nasi (2010) focus on a downsizing case in the forest sector and
describe how the corporation and employees representa-
tives emphasised the perceived CSR differently. Whereas the
corporation understood CSR as the responsibility to provide
economic competitiveness and profitability for its share-
holders, employees did not approve the tough profitability
demands of the shareholders at the cost of other stakeholders
and called the corporation to show local and social respon-
sibility.
Scholars have explored corporate public reports and web-
sites to establish how they (re)construct issues, such as,
sustainability or environmentalism (Laine, 2005; Livesey,
1999, 2002a; Onkila, 2009; Tregidga & Milne, 2006), or CSR
(Coupland, 2005; Nielsen & Thomsen, 2007). Apart from
Livesey (2001), who investigated two environmental disputes
involving Shell UK, the focus of these have tended to be,
however, generic, rather than concentrating on a specific
contestable business undertaking. Moreover, the interest of
these studies often lies on a stand-alone social report, or if
investigating the annual report, on specific accounts or
statements, where corporations purposefully disclose infor-
mation on their actions, aiming at promoting social and
environmental goals, rather than on exploring whether the
social aspects are integrated and, if so, how they are inte-
grated into the construction of the financial image of the
organisation. This is the case, in spite of the dominant
condition that corporate ethics has to be implemented in
the capitalist market economy, where corporate viability
depends on its ability to make profit (see Steinmann &
Scherer, 2000); and construction of the financial image of
the organisation can, therefore, be seen as critical in terms
T. Vuontisja
rvi
of how the organisation is viewed and judged (Gray, Kouhy, &
Lavers, 1995a).
This study aims to extend the previous discursive CSR
research, which focuses on questionable business practices,
to explore systematically, and in detail, how these practices
are constructed in corporate mainstream economic/financial
disclosures as presented in corporate ARs. The research is
specifically interested in how, if at all, social and ethical
elements are embedded in corporate disclosures, as their
presence can be seen as potentially opening up a space for a
discursive struggle. The paper suggests that subtle argumen-
tation strategies and techniques are at work even in a text,
which may at first sight appear to provide an impression of
neutrality. It further argues that these patterns of argumen-
tation work to sustain certain discourses of downsizing, which
may have originally been contested, but that then have
become largely institutionalised in business language and
are, therefore, moving in the direction of being seen as
describing only what is normal and acceptable in this con-
text. As Livesey (2002a, 2002b) suggests from Foucaults
perspective, however, meaning is not fixed, so hegemonic
control can never be complete; it must be constantly repro-
duced and reconstituted (see Chouliaraki & Fairclough, 1999;
Deetz, 1992). Contradiction and ambiguity, which emerge as
discourses overlap and intersect in a complex and unstable
field, allow spaces for resistance and change and for new
ways of constituting reality (see Chouliaraki & Fairclough,
1999; Fairclough, 1992; Livesey, 2002b). Hence, it is impor-
tant to interrogate the self-evidence of these discourses (see
Smart, 1983), and problematise the taken for granted knowl-
edge, under which certain social and political conditions
become accepted as a truth (Livesey & Kearins, 2002).
Conceptual framework: CSR, social
legitimacy and downsizing
CSR research has been fragmented in terms of empirics and
theory. CSR debate started from the philosophicalethical
concept that business corporations have an obligation to
work for social betterment. Later on, this was extended to
the action-oriented managerial concept of corporate social
responsiveness, that is, the capacity of a corporation to
respond to social pressure and subsequently, has been fol-
lowed by many other responsibility-related issues (Frederick,
1994; Jones, 1995; Windsor, 2001). In particular, instrumental
approaches to CSR have grown in prevalence (see Palazzo &
Scherer, 2006; Scherer & Palazzo, 2007), the dominant per-
spective in current literature suggesting that CSR is good for
business (Crane, McWilliams, Matten, Moon, & Siegel, 2008),
and its primary function is to enhance the firms profitability
(Calvano, 2008). In the organisation and management litera-
ture interest has been taken in modelling CSR and related
concepts (see e.g. Carroll, 1979, 1991; Elkington, 1997;
Swanson, 1995; Wartick & Cochran, 1985; Wood, 1991).
These approaches have, in general, either searched for or
described a unifying view of CSR.
Wartick and Cochran (1985) suggest that the ideas of
moral agency and social contract provide the basic premises
for the CSR concept. Moral agency refers to the premise that
a business acts as a moral agent in society and must, there-
fore, behave in a manner consistent with that societys values
Argumentation and socially questionable business practices
(Donaldson, 1982), to be morally legitimate. In contemporary
versions of social contract theory, rights and liberties are
founded on mutually advantageous agreements made
between members of society. The social contract is a crucial
element in both legitimacy and CSR discussions. Legitimacy
theory itself relies upon this concept (Deegan, 2002; Math-
ews, 1993; ODonovan, 2002). Social legitimacy in the frame
of a social contract is understood as a licence to operate in
society, gained by coordinating stakeholders interests and
behaving in a publicly acceptable manner (Deegan, 2002). An
organisations survival is considered to be threatened if
society perceives that it has breached its social contract.
As a theoretical construct, the terms (or clauses) of the
social contract cannot be known with any precision, and
different managers will have different perceptions about
the various terms of the contract.
According to the principles of CSR and the social contract
theory, downsizing can be seen as a questionable business
undertaking. In many countries, including Finland, the social
contract has been traditionally based on the idea that as a
response to employee loyalty and full-time work the
employer offers a (relatively) permanent employment con-
tract and predictable income (see Ja rvensivu, 2007; Lamsa
, potentially responding to external pressures, such as, publicity
2001). Employee downsizing can, therefore, be seen as con-
stituting a breach against traditional socio-cultural values.
Moreover, Donaldson (1982) suggests that the social contract
includes an element of justice, that is, among other things,
that organisations show respect for their workers as human
beings, and avoid any practice that systematically worsens
the situation of a given group in society. These principles may
be violated when conducting layoffs. Van Buren (2000) sug-
gests that any theory with regard to CSR in downsizing must
start with an assumption that employers owe duties to
employees. According to him, the inherent ethical questions
are whether a decision to downsize is justifiable, that is, the
extent to which a declining resource munificence exists, and
how downsized employees are treated (see also La msa
, 1995). Discourse analysis can, therefore, be described to
2001). He goes further and suggests that employment rela-
tions have public dimensions and, therefore, employers may
also owe duties to the surrounding community, which often
suffers as a result of corporate downsizing operations.
This research is interested in how corporations (re)build a
sense of legitimacy to a questionable business undertaking,
and at the same time (re)construct the role and responsi-
bilities of the company in this context. In the context of this
research the term legitimation is seen as meaning the same
as creating a sense of a positive, beneficial, understandable,
necessary, ethical or otherwise acceptable action in a spe-
cific setting (see Siltaoja & Vehkapera, 2010; Vaara & Tienari,
2008; Van Dijk, 1998; Van Leeuwen & Wodak, 1999). Much of
the CSR literature that has applied legitimacy theory origi-
nates from the field of social and environmental accounting.
These legitimacy analyses have usually considered legitimacy
as a resource on which corporations are dependent for
survival and that they often can manipulate or impact (Dowl-
ing & Pfeffer, 1975; Pfeffer & Salancik, 1978) through their
ethical codes, standards and other policies.
Palazzo and Scherer (2006) suggest, however, that this
concept of legitimacy is based on relatively stable and
homogenous societal expectations and does not adequately
reflect changes in modern society, which is challenged by a
loss of efficiency in national governance systems, values and
295
lifestyles. They argue that legitimacy should be considered
less as something to be engineered, manipulated, bought or
imitated by organisations and more as a result of commu-
nication where the societal limits to profit making are con-
tinuously defined and redefined. In this approach, companies
are seen as being active participants in establishing what is
social responsibility in public discourses rather than only
using their social programmes or taking other actions to
strategically respond to or alter the demands of powerful
stakeholder groups (see e.g. Dowling & Pfeffer, 1975;
ODonovan, 2002).
The discursive perspective applied in this research is sen-
sitive to the fact that societal norms and values, as well as the
boundaries of socially acceptable corporate behaviour, are
culturally and historically bound and constantly under social
contest and change. These are often overlooked, but impor-
tant aspects, which are necessary in the understanding of not
only legitimacy challenges, but also other aspects with regard
to questionable business practices in an increasingly interde-
pendent global society (e.g. Levy, 2008; Scherer, Palazzo, &
Baumann, 2006). This research, therefore, sees corporations
and their disclosures as not only reflecting a particular truth or
in the media, but also contributing to the public debate with
regard to acceptable reasons for downsizing and business
relationships and treatment of affected stakeholders, that
is, employees and local communities, which may have suffered
from the downsizing operation.
Methodological approach
Subtle meaning-making processes and forms of reasoning are
often difficult to analyse in precise and systematic ways,
because they tend to require interpretation and because
their applications shift with context (see Crosswhite,
be more like a philosophical approach to research than a
strict methodological procedure. In this study, argumenta-
tion strategies are seen as specific (not always intentional or
conscious) ways of using a set of techniques, in order to
mobilise or marginalise certain macro-discourses to build
acceptance for a particular interpretation of corporate role,
relations and responsibilities in the context of questionable
business undertaking. By macro-discourses, this study means
the broader context of discussion, with wider social implica-
tions, on corporate role and responsibilities.
Perelman and Olbrechts-Tytecas (2006) The New Rhetoric
is used here to help to reveal the argumentation techniques
(which form a basis for broader strategies) used in corporate
disclosures in their ARs. Annual reporting has moved from the
conveyance of simple accounting numbers and more
towards narrative (Campbell, McPhail, & Slack, 2009).
Rutherford (2005) suggests, however, that narratives in cor-
porate reports are constrained notably by the need to align
the account offered in the narrative with that in the numer-
ical financial statements, both to achieve credibility for the
narrative with its readers and to satisfy regulatory require-
ments. AR(s) are, therefore, expected to rely in many parts
on the formal language of economics, which may at first sight
provide an impression of neutrality, especially in compar-
ison with other genres, such as, media text or political
296
speeches which are likely to use more openly rhetorical
expression. The New Rhetoric was considered as a particu-
larly suitable framework for this type of text, as its detailed
techniques and rich illustrations have been claimed to be
helpful in detecting claims to rationality embedded in
verbal structures that at first sight appear to be dispositional
(see Arnold, 2005).
The argumentation techniques drawn from The New
Rhetoric and adapted to the purposes of this research are
listed in Table 1. Apart from presenting various techniques
with regard to choice, presence and presentation, Perelman
and Olbrechts-Tyteca (2006, see also Perelman, 2005) divide
argumentation techniques into two main categories. Asso-
ciation brings separate elements together and establishes a
unity among them, whereas dissociation seeks to drive a
wedge between elements which have been previously pre-
sented together within some system of thought. The two
techniques are complementary and always at work at the
same time; but argumentation can stress the association or
the dissociation which it is promoting without making explicit
the complementary aspect. The New Rhetoric further ela-
borates these techniques into subcategories and illustrates
them by practical examples.
Downsizing is typically a domain, where corporate man-
agers face diverse and possibly contradictory discourses. In
particular, large-scale redundancies may provoke much pub-
lic uproar and considerable debate in the popular press
(Orlando, 1999; Van Buren, 2000). Whereas business dis-
course tends to stress the potential economic benefit of
downsizing to the firm and its shareholders, the argumenta-
tion of employees, trade unions and local communities typi-
cally associates downsizing with the consequent risk of
unemployment and the loss of future earnings or tax revenues
(see e.g. Ma kela
& Nasi, 2010).
This potential for contradictory interpretations brings in
the question of power. As critics have pointed out, however,
the concept of power does not seem to be an integral part of
The New Rhetoric (see Summa, 1996). The authors focus one-
sidedly on the rational basis of argument, and do not pay
much attention to issues, such as, manipulation, propaganda
or ideology (Meyer, 1993). Moreover, Plantin (1990, 2005)
argues that The New Rhetoric is based on the implicit
assumption that whenever argumentation is used, it is also
possible to end up with a consensus which is based on
rationality. The paper relies, therefore, on notions of power
as presented by Foucault and authors who have built on his
ideas, such as, Fairclough (1992, 1995) and also pays atten-
tion to Liveseys (see e.g. 2002a, 2002b) research with regard
to corporate environmental disclosures.
Following Fairclough (1992, 1995), discourse can be seen
as a social practice, which constitutes social identities, (e.g.
a company as a rational actor/caring actor), social relations
(e.g. relations between a company and employees/local
communities) and the knowledge and meaning systems of
the social world. Given discourse is, however, also consti-
tuted by social practice and structures.
Analysing how corporate disclosures on downsizing con-
nect to other texts and discourses is important in order to
understand how power relationships work in these dis-
courses. For Foucault (1974), texts always draw upon and
transform other contemporary and historically prior texts.
Any given type of discourse is generated out of combinations
T. Vuontisja
rvi
of others and is defined by its relationships with others
(Fairclough, 1992). Moreover, by producing a text that evokes
other texts and discourses, the company helps to shape the
way it will be interpreted and improves the chances it will be
taken up by other actors (see Phillips, Lawrence, & Hardy,
2004).
Corporate disclosures do not, therefore, only rhetorically
produce particular knowledge or truth about the firms
themselves, but also are influenced by and influence the
sometimes contradictory meanings and practices that are
developing under the rubrics of downsizing at the wider
societal level (see Livesey & Kearins, 2002). Business can,
therefore, contribute to (re)constructing socially question-
able undertaking in a certain way, and influence the way it is
understood in social reality. A way of exercising power is by
means of achieving the standardisation of the actions that
are favourable to a certain entity through discourse. In this
manner, discourses reflect and sustain social practice and
institutional forms by helping to arrange the world in specific
ways, that then come to be accepted (Fairclough, 1992;
Hajer, 1995; Wetherell & Potter, 1992). Discourses do not,
however, constitute unified and stable fields. Contradiction
and ambiguity allow spaces for resistance and change, for
new ways of imagining and constituting reality, and for
subjects to be empowered as well as enslaved (Chouliaraki
& Fairclough, 1999; Fairclough, 1992; Livesey, 2002b).
Sample of downsizing companies
Companies have been selected by following the list compiled
by the Central Organisation of Finnish Trade Unions (SAK,
2005). The list provides information covering all companies
listed in the Helsinki Stock Exchange that have conducted
codetermination negotiations in the year 2005 to implement
staff reductions, and is based on media follow-up. Only those
companies were selected, for which the list also provided the
finishing date for codetermination negotiations, with a deci-
sion to make one or more of their employees redundant. As
some inaccuracies were detected in the list, and as many
disclosures in ARs tended to be elusive, leaving the reader to
wonder if any decision to lay-off staff had actually taken
place, the list was double-checked. If there was a reason to
doubt that the company had actually made somebody
straightforwardly redundant or was planning to do so, (rather
than only reducing its staff by retirement arrangements or
moving employees to other tasks within the company group),
on the basis of the information found in the respective AR,
the companys press and stock exchange releases, searches in
Google, in online versions of the leading Finnish daily news-
paper, Helsingin Sanomat, and online news of economic
journals, the company was excluded. Two companies pro-
duced only the statutory financial statements, which did not
include, for example, the CEOs review. For reasons of
comparability, these were not included in the sample.
ARs written in Finnish were selected for investigation.
Companies who did not produce a report in Finnish were
excluded from the sample to ensure comparability between
the reports. As the sample has been selected by following a
list, which compiles companies downsizing in Finland, the
analysis of reports in the Finnish language ensured that also
the victims of layoffs, employees who have been, or will be
left without job, and survivors of layoffs, as well as the
Argumentation and socially questionable business practices
members of communities potentially affected by downsizing
could figure among the audience, whether or not they are
fluent in a foreign language. Whereas much of the business
language derives from an international context, in some
parts, the analysis seeks to go deeper into the meaning of
the words, such as, dormant (sleeping), metaphors (see
Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca, 2006), which are seen to be
embedded in the language and largely internalised by the
speaker. The focus on Finnish language reports was, there-
fore, considered to provide greater accuracy, as it is likely
that native Finnish speakers have been involved in the writing
and editorial process of the reports. Consequently, they can
be seen to draw, to some extent, from the Finnish cultural
experience. Furthermore, as my own mother tongue is Fin-
nish, the use of the Finnish language has helped me to better
detect subtle meaning-making processes, which may other-
wise pass unnoticed. English versions of the reports provided
help for translations. Whenever there was an inconsistency
between the English and Finnish version, the Finnish version
has, however, been relied on, and the translation is made by
the author to provide maximum consistency with the Finnish
version.
After careful consideration, the remaining companies
were included in the sample, even if the number of redun-
dancies varied from three to 180 employees. This is because
some companies, whose layoffs concerned less than ten
employees, provided a clearer account of the matter,
whereas many of those laying off more were more elusive.
Furthermore, it should be noted that even if the number of
actual layoffs remained small, co-determination negotia-
tions may have covered a larger number of employees. More-
over, SAKs list concerns only layoffs decided in collaborative
negotiations taking place in Finland in the year 2005. There-
fore, the company may have conducted more layoffs outside
Finland, or layoffs may have been part of a series of layoffs
started in the previous years, or the company may have
planned more layoffs for the coming years. So, the final
sample consists of 251 companies in various industries, having
30 or more employees on their payroll.
The year 2005 was selected as the target year. It was one
of the years with an intensified wave of redundancies in
Finland, in part, due to companies moving their production
to low cost countries (Finnish Ministry of Employment, 2007).
Furthermore, a lot of attention was paid to corporate layoffs
in this year, both by high-level politicians (see Boxberg, 2005;
Halonen, 2005) and by the media (e.g. Boxberg, 2005; Miet-
tinen, 2005; Mykka nen, 2005a, 2005b). In the year 2007, the
number of listed companies laying off dropped, but then
peaked due to the economic recession in 2009 (SAK, 2007,
2009). As 2005 was a year with a number of companies
conducting lay-offs, despite the fact that the Finnish econ-
omy was still growing, it was likely that the sample would
include profitable companies. This was verified by a review of
ARs for the year. A number of companies boasted good overall
economic results and growth in their respective reports.
There were also companies who stated that their results
1
Discourse analysis tends to use small data sets because the
objective of the analysis is to say a lot about a little and because
the analysis is particularly laborious and time-consuming (see Potter
& Wetherell, 1987; Silverman, 1993).
297
were not as good as expected, or referred to the year of
changes in their CEOs review or even to poor profitability or
losses. In their reports, however, only three companies
explicitly connected the closure or reduction in staff of
the factory or unit (or one of them) to losses. Nonetheless,
for the purposes of this paper, it is not essential as per se, how
compelling each individual decision to downsize was, as the
stress is on how downsizing is discursively (re)constructed,
not on the event of downsizing itself.
This paper is interested in how socially contested business
undertakings are constructed in corporate mainstream eco-
nomic and financial disclosures. The AR (in an electronic
form) was selected as the principal document, which con-
structs the corporate economicfinancial image. Moreover,
the AR is an influential, regularly produced and widely dis-
seminated document (Botosan, 1997; Gray, Meek et al.,
1995). Discourses in ARs can, therefore, be suggested to play
an important role in (re)constructing reality in a certain
way.
The genre of ARs provides an interesting object for textual
analysis as it can be expected to rely, in many parts, on the
formal language of economics, which may at first sight
provide an impression of neutrality, especially in compar-
ison with other genres, such as, media text or political
speeches, which are likely to use more openly rhetorical
expressions. The primary audience of ARs have traditionally
been financial stakeholders. It has, however, been suggested
that it has more recently metamorphosed into a marketing
and public relations document, impacts of which extend far
beyond this group (see McKinstry, 1996; Stanton & Stanton,
2002). It is also important to note that many companies
include voluntary type of information with regard to their
personnel management, or broader social and sustainability
policies into the narrative content of their reports (see Lovio
& Kuisma, 2006; LTT Research Ltd., 2005; Stanton & Stanton,
2002).
Even if ARs have moved from the conveyance of a simple
accounting of numbers towards a more narrative style, and
have substantially lengthened over time (Campbell, Moore, &
Shrives, 2006; Campbell et al., 2009) they can be still seen, as
being notably constrained by the need to align the account
offered in the narrative with that in the numerical financial
statements, both to achieve credibility for the narrative with
its readers and to satisfy regulatory requirements (Ruther-
ford, 2005).
Analysis process in practice
As many as 203 accounts, or text fragments where downsizing
was discussed either explicitly or implicitly were distin-
guished in the ARs. The average report contained eight
accounts, the highest number of accounts in any one report
was 23 and the smallest two. The Adobe Acrobat Reader
search engine was used to check the reports against a specific
list of words and terms. All accounts which explicitly men-
tioned layoffs, staff reductions, or collaborative negotiations
are included in the figure. In the remaining accounts, down-
sizing was typically referred to by a wide variety of terms,
such as, efficiency measures, adaptation of production, or
restructuring. Each of these accounts was checked against
background information, such as, the downsizing decision,
location, specific processes, and the wording used to describe
298
these in corporate press releases, media articles or other
material found by searches in Google. If there was any doubt
whether the account actually discussed downsizing, it was
excluded. Sheer references to the termination of a factory or
work site were not calculated. The same applies to technical
accounting information with regard to restructuring or plant
closure.
The accounts were read through several times to establish
the salient argumentation techniques with the help of The
New Rhetoric (Perelman & Olbrecths-Tyteca, 2006). After
this, the detected argumentation techniques were cate-
gorised in accordance with a discernible pattern (Fair-
clough, 1992, p. 236), that is, the theme which they helped to
(re)actualise. The established themes discussed downsizing
either as a means towards an increase in corporate perfor-
mance, common management practice or one of the many
factors affecting the results, an inevitable act, an emo-
tionless rational act and an act agreed together with
employees and/or having human concerns. It should be
noted, however, that these themes include overlaps and
distinguishing the themes often involved interpretation or
reading between lines as the theme was not always explicit
in the text. Some techniques, such as, argumentation from
authority, provided support for more than one theme.
I compared these categorised techniques and the themes
they helped to (re)construct with the previous research
which has reconstructed argumentation frameworks (see
e.g. Erkama & Vaara, 2010; Siltaoja, 2009; Siltaoja & Vehka-
pera , 2010; Suddaby & Greenwood, 2005; Vaara, Tienari, &
Laurila, 2006; Van Leeuwen & Wodak, 1999). This helped me
to establish five broader argumentation patterns or strate-
gies, which were named as follows: rationalisation, normal-
isation, inevitability, emotional/moral distancing and
moralisation.
Pragmatic means-ends technique, which was explicitly or
implicitly present in the majority of accounts, constructed
employee downsizing as a means for the company to increase
its economic performance. Thus, it referred to the utility or
function of the action. This corresponds with the definition of
the rationalisation strategy used by earlier research (see
Siltaoja & Vehkapera , 2010; Vaara et al., 2006). Certain
metaphoric terms embedded in the text, such as efficiency
as an aim of layoffs, can be seen as creating an implicit
association between the company and a machine (see Clancy,
1999; Morgan, 2006). They may prompt the reader to picture
the company as a rational actor, working in a truly systematic
and orderly way when downsizing. The definition of the
rationalisation strategy in this research was, therefore,
extended to cover both references to the utility function
and the implicit associations between the firm and a
machine.
One commonly repeated technique in corporate disclosures
was categorisation. Categorisation is here defined as present-
ing layoffs together with other already established, perhaps
less contested, business practices or factors affecting corpo-
rate results. This pattern of argumentation seemed to render
downsizing as a normal, routine business practice. For that
reason, it was named as normalisation. The category has
been introduced earlier by Vaara et al. (2006), who claimed
that rendering something as being normal or natural merits
special recognition. In their research the impression of normal-
ity was achieved by exemplarity, that is, by reference to
T. Vuontisja
rvi
similar cases in the future or past. In this research, as the
reports were focusing on one year only, and as they were
generally evasive with regard to downsizing, exemplarity did
not seem to play an important role. Instead, a core technique
used to reach the same end, to render something normal, was
categorisation, as defined above.
A number of techniques seemed to contribute to creating
a pattern of inevitability in the text and, thus, form a
strategy which has been named as such. At the core of this
strategy are terms like adapt or adaptation which appear
to derive from the imagery of the organisation as a living
organism. They seem to introduce a degree of determinism
into the text, as they created the impression of the company
at the mercy of market forces, in the same way as a living
organism is dependent on its environment for survival
(Clancy, 1999; Morgan, 2006). Another important technique
creating an impression of inevitability was the fact-conse-
quence argument; this portrayed layoffs as a consequence of,
for example, collaborative negotiations, or an efficiency
program. The definition of this category roughly corresponds
with what Suddaby and Greenwood (2005) called cosmolo-
gical, in their theorising on rhetorical strategies (see also
Erkama & Vaara, 2010). Cosmological explanations empha-
size the inevitability of an action, on the grounds that it is
seen as caused by forces which are beyond the agency of
immediate actors and audiences. Such arguments tend to
describe an act as a natural process of evolution or conse-
quence of globalisation.
When reading corporate disclosures against the research
framework of this paper, attention was soon focused on what
was not in the text rather than what was presented. Omis-
sion, in terms of, for example, missing regrets or possible
measures to help employees, contributed to creating the
feeling that layoffs were a purely rational act; that they did
not involve any emotional or moral aspects. The downsizing
accounts tended to be evasive, and avoid the use of exact
words, such as, making somebody redundant. Moreover,
they tended to describe layoffs as a means to positive ends,
rather than as a fact with potentially negative consequences.
Therefore, this argumentation pattern, constructed by the
previously described techniques, was named as emotional/
moral distancing. It can be seen as a counter strategy to
pathos, that is, emotional and moral claims, drawing from
Aristotles (1954) classic rhetoric (see also Erkama & Vaara,
2010).
There were traces of elements in corporate accounts
which can be seen as deriving from contemporary CSR dis-
course, or opponents discourses with regard to the negative
impacts of downsizing on employees. This pattern of argu-
mentation and technique of presence which forms its core
was named as moralisation. The strategy corresponds with
earlier research, which has defined moralisation as legitima-
tion by specific values (Siltaoja & Vehkapera , 2010; Vaara
et al., 2006; Van Leeuwen & Wodak, 1999), or what Erkama
and Vaara (2010) named as Pathos (drawing from Aristotle,
1954), that is, emotional and moral arguments.
It is important to point out that interpreting the text and
identifying the structure of the arguments provide nothing
more than plausible hypotheses, and other possible readings
and interpretations are always possible (see Perelman &
Olbrecths-Tyteca, 2006). Moreover, my own position as an
interpreter of the text is bound not to be neutral, but
Argumentation and socially questionable business practices
coloured by specific predetermined opinions and meanings.
Effort has been made, therefore, to provide details, explain
each stage of analysis and ensure transparency by providing
examples.
Argumentation techniques
This section is divided into main headings as adapted from
The New Rhetoric (Perelman & Olbrecths-Tyteca, 2006) for
the purposes of this research. Table 1 provides a summary of
the typical argumentation techniques identified under these
headings, and further elaborates to describe their character-
istics in corporate disclosures and provides examples. The
text below interrogates the main argumentation techniques
in detail.
Choice, presence and presentation
As examples in Table 1 show, disclosures tended to use the
formal language of economics and apply the passive mode of
the verb or name the company as a subject. Furthermore, the
matter tended to be kept at a general level, no reference was
made to individuals, and focus was kept on groups and
numbers. This is as if the speaker wishes to avoid arousing
any emotion. These stylistic attributes tend to have the
impact of decreasing the authors responsibility for the
matter; it helps to make him remote from what he says
(see Perelman & Olbrecths-Tyteca, 2006).
The speaker also selects certain words and qualifiers over
others (ibid). Most accounts on downsizing were charac-
terised by an overall evasiveness. Only 29 (14%) of the
detected downsizing accounts referred explicitly to the term
making somebody redundant (that is, used the Finnish term
irtisanoa). A further 29 (14%) accounts referred to reductions
or decrease in staff numbers and 18 (9%) mentioned code-
termination negotiations only without making their results
explicit. The remaining accounts replaced or covered these
more explicit words with terms, such as, measures to:
improve efficiency, cut the overlaps, adapt the opera- (which can be unanimous or impersonal) is used to gain
tions or simplify the organisation structures.
In five cases the whole report made no explicit reference
to redundancies, codetermination negotiations, or to reduc-
tions in the number of personnel. The reader could only
suspect that layoffs had taken place through the documen-
ted closure of a factory or business place, or by reference
made to adaptation in the number of personnel, or some-
times by references to organisational changes, rationali-
sation, or importance of the cost-effectiveness of the
operations.
Layoffs were often either explicitly or implicitly pre-
sented as a means to achieve the targeted end. In this
way, they sometimes ended up being categorised with,
and thus were given the same status as other means, such
as, more efficient logistic solutions or selling and renting
back a warehouse (see Table 1 for examples). Sometimes
categorisation was done by presenting downsizing implicitly
or explicitly under the business strategy, development of
operations or results and profitability section, and in this
way dealt with other normal management practices, or
with other factors potentially affecting the results of the
company.
299
Furthermore, only seven companies (8 accounts, 4%)
attached any qualifiers to the text, which may be interpreted
as referring to feelings. In most cases this was done in the
CEOs review, and reference was made to codetermination
negotiations, which felt heavy, or to an adaptation process
which was hard for personnel, or to difficult changes,
difficult or painful decisions, or stinging measures. The
fact that certain elements are presented to the audience,
stresses their importance in context (Perelman, 2005; Perel-
man & Olbrecths-Tyteca, 2006). The authors also acknowl-
edge that suppression of presence (Perelman & Olbrecths-
Tyteca, 2006), that is, incompleteness of presentation or
omission, is an important tactic in argumentation. In the
reports examined here, not only the disclosures referring to
emotion, but also those concerning the treatment of employ-
ees were missing or tended to remain succinct. Furthermore,
none of the seven CSR sections detected in the reports
mentioned staff reductions. Moreover, only twelve of nine-
teen companies who had devoted a special section for per-
sonal matters referred to reductions in personnel in this. The
absence of information implies that the company either does
not regard downsizing and how it is done as an integral part of
its CSR or personnel policies, or does not wish them to be
regarded as an integral part of it.
Association techniques
Corporate disclosures relied typically on pragmatic argument
by using either fact-consequence or means-ends succes-
sion. Redundancies were often presented implicitly or expli-
citly either as a consequence of certain facts, or a means to
the ends, such as, improving efficiency, or improving
competitiveness. In Perelman terms, presenting something
as a consequence minimises its effect, whereas the impor-
tance of the matter is enhanced if it is presented as an end
(see Perelman, 2005; Perelman & Olbrecths-Tyteca, 2006).
Another technique commonly present was argumentation
from authority, where the prestige of a person or group
acceptance.
The conciseness of the text and lack of openly rhetorical
expressions can mislead the reader into thinking that the use
of metaphors is not customary in the text (see Summa, 1989).
Reference to two commonly used business metaphors can,
however, be distinguished from corporate disclosures:
machine and organism metaphors. These were in the form,
which Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca (2006; see also Perel-
man, 2005) refer to as a dormant, (sleeping) metaphor, that
which has got detached from its origins and established itself
in a new context.
For instance, the often used Finnish verb tehostaa
(improve efficiency/effectiveness) derives from the word
teho ( power), which is commonly used as a measure in
physics when talking of machines. Streamlining is another
term with mechanistic connotations. The dictionary defini-
tion for the noun streamline is: a contour given to a car,
aeroplane, etc. so as to minimise resistance to motion. A
further term related to the machine metaphor is the Finnish
verb kaynnista
a, which is commonly used with the more
concrete meaning of switching on a machine, or starting a
car. This verb sometimes replaced the more neutral way to
300
Table 1 Argumentation techniques and their applicationa.
Typical disclosure
Choice, presence, presentation
Choice of words Expressions stating explicitly that
somebody has been made redundant
replaced/covered/used interchangeably
with other terms
Categorising Categorising redundancies together with
other routine management strategies/
practices and, therefore, giving them the
same status
Presence Reference to an element, which can be
seen to represent ethics, duty or feeling
Omission Missing presentation of measures to help
employees; lack of emotional language;
omission of downsizing from CSR sections/
personnel sections
Association and dissociation techniques
Argumentation Reference to demand, market, a profit
from authority or efficiency program, or to collaborative
negotiations which implicitly or explicitly
authorised the lay-offs
Fact-consequence Presenting downsizing as a consequence of
pragmatic argument certain facts, such as adaptation of
operations, or as a result of a specific
programme
Means-ends Presenting downsizing implicitly or
pragmatic argument explicitly as a means (or one of the means)
to positive economic ends, such as,
improving efficiency or competitiveness
Metaphors Association of downsizing with mechanistic
terms, such as improving efficiency or
streamlining
Association of the company with a living
organism, and drawing a link between the
company and the idea of a persons health.
Suggestion that organisations are open
systems that need to adapt to
environmental circumstances for their
survival
Dissociation by Means-ends argument can be seen as a
reversal of pairs result of dissociation, where layoffs have
been separated from the human
consequences which ordinary people may
associate to it
a
The list of techniques is not exhaustive, but is based on frequency and strategic importance of any one technique.
b
Italics added by the author.
T. Vuontisja
rvi
Examples b
The productivity was improved by the increased
total volume and the corrective measures, which
were used to adapt the capacity of packaging
machinery manufacturing to better meet demand.
(Elecster, 2005, p. 8)
StoraEnso Timber has also taken decisions to reduce
production volumes and personnel at some other
sawmills. . .Other actions to improve productivity
involve more efficient logistic solutions, reduction
of fixed costs, and further fine-tuning of the
organisation. (StoraEnso, 2005, p. 24)
The lay-offs were largely carried out in September.
In addition, the pension plans, reassignments, and
changes in job positions that were agreed, as well as
expiring fixed-term jobs will be enough to cover the
need for a reduction in staff. (PKC-Group, 2005, p.
24)
No disclosure
. . .and production volumes at some plants will be
adapted to better match the demand of the products
they produce. These measures will impact on the
number of personnel towards the end of 2006.
(Fiskars, 2005, p. 22)
The total number of personnel has fallen in recent
years mainly due to the adaptation measures and
outsourcing of non-core businesses. (Raute, 2005, p.
14)
In order to maintain competitiveness and to improve
the efficiency of its operations, eQ Bank Ltd held
codetermination negotiations in the brokerage
services business unit and support operations in
June. As the result of these negotiations, the number
of employees decreased by nine. (eQ 2005, p. 35)
The Groups operations were streamlined by
transferring the cutting of wiring, a front-of-line
function in the production process from the factory
in Kempele to the one in Kostomuksha. (PKC-group,
2005, p. 17)
Perlos decided on February 6th, 2006 to continue to
adapt its functions to match demand and will start
up measures to regain the health of its loss-making
operations in Finland and US. (Perlos, 2005, p. 28)
Inherent in the examples above concerning means-
ends constructions (see section Dissociation
techniques for further details)
Argumentation and socially questionable business practices
say, for example, that the measures to increase efficiency of
operations aloitettiin (e.g. were initiated).
The organism metaphor sees the organisation as a living
system, existing in a wider environment on which it depends
for the satisfaction of various needs (Morgan, 2006). In line
with this, some companies referred to regaining the health
(tervehdytta minen) of the business operations as an implicit
or explicit aim for staff reductions, thereby making an
association between the company and the idea of a persons
health. Clancy (1999) argues that, although health (or illness)
is characteristic of all living beings, the use of this entailment
in business usually has a human context. As the human being
has a transcendent value in virtually all cultures, the idea of
business as being humanlike suggests, therefore, that the
businesss survival and goals are superior to any other pur-
poses, including that of society.
Furthermore, the term environment indicates the inter-
dependence of the organisation with the surrounding society.
Organisations are, therefore, seen to be open systems that
need careful management to satisfy and balance internal needs
and to adapt to environmental circumstances (Morgan, 2006).
With regard to corporate disclosures, terms, such as, adapt or
adaptation (sopeuttaa, sopeutus) were commonly used to
replace or cover more explicit terms referring to layoffs.
Dissociation techniques
Most ordinary people would probably associate being made
redundant with the negative impacts this has on the indi-
vidual or society, such as, financial difficulties, decrease in
self-esteem and loss of job opportunities. In companies
disclosures, a pragmatic means-ends argument was, how-
ever, used to associate downsizing with positive ends, such
as, profits or gains in efficiency (see Table 1). In Perelman and
Olbrechts-Tytecas (2006) terms, this can be seen as a dis-
sociation, which follows the reversal of philosophical cou-
ples. The philosophical couple (consequence/fact or
principle), where redundancies have an absolute value as
a fact or principle (term II) (see Perelman, 2005; Perelman &
Olbrecths-Tyteca, 2006):
consequences to individual and=or society term I
redundancies term II
can be seen, therefore, as being transformed into a
philosophical pair (means/end), where redundancies have
only a relative value (term I) in comparison with the end,
which has the absolute value:
redundancies term I
increased efficiency term II
Redundancies, which was in the absolute position of
term II in the first pair, transforms itself to the relative
and weak position of term I in the second pair, where it is
presented as a means to an end (for more details, see
Perelman & Olbrecths-Tyteca, 2006, pp. 415436; Perelman,
2005, pp. 126137). For Perelman and Olbrecths-Tyteca
(2006), if something is regarded as a means, it is the same
as saying that the concern with regard to it is only apparent.
The end, in this case increased efficiency, now presents a
norm which allows the distinguishing between the different
consequences of redundancies, and promotes those which
are of value to this end, whereas those which are not,
301
seemingly cease to exist. Redundancies now only have a
value in terms of their potential positive impact on the
corporation and its economic performance, which is the real
object of preoccupation.
Argumentation strategies and their power
implications
Argumentation techniques were grouped together and
named on the basis of the more general argumentation
pattern they helped to establish as rationalisation, nor-
malisation, inevitability, emotional and moral distancing
and moralisation. These five patterns are called argumen-
tation strategies in order to make a difference between
them and argumentation techniques, which are used here
to describe more specific, linguistic or presentational ways to
use language. It should be noted, that moralisation as a
strategy tended to remain vague and incomplete in compar-
ison with other strategies and was often played down by
them. Nevertheless, this strategy has been presented below,
as it demonstrates how social elements are embedded in the
accounts, which is an important purpose of this paper. More-
over, moralisation can be seen as bringing into the text the
elements of discursive struggle around what the proper
relationship among corporation and society should be (see
Hajer, 1995; Livesey, 2001), by presenting human concerns
together with profit making and economic performance.
In corporate downsizing accounts, the distinguished stra-
tegies were often interconnected and intertwined. The dis-
tinction made, therefore, is first and foremost an analytical
effort and, so, is open to critical scrutiny. Table 2 summarises
the identified argumentation strategies, suggests core tech-
niques used in their construction, and discourses which these
strategies work to (re)actualise or marginalise and the poten-
tial power implications of this. Each technique is illustrated
by a sample extract. More detailed scrutiny over particular
examples is provided below.
Rationalisation
Rationalisation, as a legitimation by reference to the utility
of the action, is one of the strategies identified by Van
Leeuwen and Wodak (1999; see also Siltaoja, 2009; Siltaoja
& Vehkapera , 2010; Vaara et al., 2006). In this study ratio-
nalisation is extended to also refer to the ways the company
was portrayed as a rational actor when laying off employees,
that is, working in straightforwardly and orderly ways for a
seemingly predictable economic interest.
Rationalisation strategy was distinguished in 82% of the
downsizing accounts. These accounts can be seen as (re)con-
structing the social acceptability of the economic utility (for
the company and its owners) as the driving force behind
downsizing and, thus, marginalising or excluding other possi-
ble interpretations of acceptable reasons for layoffs in this
context. Core to the rationalisation strategy is the use of
explicit or implicit means-ends argument and machine meta-
phor. Means-ends argument associated a variety of positive
benefits, purposes and outcomes to downsizing, whilst
machine metaphor commonly enhanced the impression of
the company working in a predictable, rational way towards
these aims. Argument from internal authority, typically drew
 302
Table 2 Argumentation strategies, discourses and power implicationsa.

Argumentation Accountsb Reportsb Techniques on which the
strategy (n = 203) (n = 25) strategy is based c
Rationalisation 166 (82%) 25 (100%) Means-ends argument: Collaboration
negotiations were completed in the
spring and other activities for
improving the efficiency of
operations were started, aiming at
annual savings of some EUR 20 million
in Kesko Food. (Kesko, 2005, p. 22)
Machine metaphor: The operation of
the entire logistic chain from sourcing
to delivery of finished products has
been streamlined and made more
efficient (Scanfil, 2005, p. 35)
Accountsb Reportsb Emerging discourse
(n = 203) (n = 25)
158 (78%) 25 (100%) Downsizing as a positive
management strategy aiming at
ends, such as, improved
efficiency (drawing from
contemporary management and
macroeconomics literature,
mechanistic views commonly
attributed to Taylorism)
99 (49%)d 24 (96%)d
Potential power implications
Constructing a company as a
rational actor
Emphasises the interest of
shareholders/portrays employees
as interchangeable objects
Constructing the primacy of the
utility motive as an acceptable
reason for downsizing

Argument from internal authority: As 42 (21%) 10 (40%)

a result of the programs aiming at
operational excellence and
productivity improvements, I am
convinced that we will be able to meet
our profitability target of 13% return
on capital employed even in the
expected new competitive
environment. (Outokumpu, 2005, p. 4)

Normalisation 119 (59%) 24 (96%) Categorising: As part of the groups 119 (59%) 24 (96%) Downsizing as a routine Constructing a company as an
efficiency improving measures Elisa management strategy (drawing actor conducting business as
has carried out statutory employee from contemporary usual
negotiations leading to personnel management and
reductions. (Elisa, 2005, p. 40) macroeconomics literature) Contributing to
deinstitutionalisation of
permanent employment
contracts

Constructing downsizing as
nothing exceptional or
extraordinary

T. Vuontisja
rvi

Inevitability 84 (41%) 23 (92%) Straightforward choice of words:
When improving Stora Ensos
competitiveness layoffs cannot be
avoided. (Stora Enso, 2005, p. 6)
Organism metaphor: All companies in
the industry need to adapt their
operations to be able to maintain the
profitability of their operations.
(Tietoenator, 2005, p. 14)
Argumentation and socially questionable business practices
21 (10%) 14 (56%) Downsizing as an unavoidable Constructing a company as a
action (drawing from helpless actor
globalisation discourse, Darwin
and Herbert Spencers Social Transferring the responsibility to
Darwinism) an external authoritymarkets
43 (21%) 12 (48%)
Constructing the markets as an
irresistible force

Argument from external authority: 25 (12%) 9 (36%)

We are seeking to adapt our own cost
structure to enable us to operate
profitably, even under weak market
conditions. (UPM, 2005, p. 7)

Fact-consequence argument: The 42 (21%) 19 (76%)

number of personnel was reduced by
the operational efficiency
programmes carried out (Raisio,
2005, p. 54)

Emotional/ 197 (97%) 25 (100%) Evasive choice of words: . . .the focus
moral distancing in personnel management shifted in
2005 from the adaptation of
personnel to future development
projects. (Martela, 2005, p. 16)
Omission: Missing disclosures with
regard to emotional/moral discourse
145 (71%)e 7 (28%)e Marginalising or excluding Constructing a company as an
emotional/moral discourse actor committing a neutral act
without a contestable social/
ethical dimension
Marginalising or excluding
154 (76%)f 6 (24%)f employees/local communities as
stakeholders

Dissociation by reversal of pairs: 158 (78%) 25 (100%) Marginalising or excluding human

Present in all means ends concerns/ethical consequences
constructions

303
 304
Table 2 (Continued )
Argumentation Accountsb Reportsb Techniques on which the Accountsb Reportsb Emerging discourse Potential power implications
strategy (n = 203) (n = 25) strategy is based c (n = 203) (n = 25)
Moralisation 49 (24%) 19 (76%) Presence of duty/ethics: The 13 (6%)g 9 (36%)g Emotional/moral discourse Constructing a company as an
(remained vague collaborative negotiations concerned (drawing from contemporary actor with a duty or even as a
and incomplete) 34 employees. As a result of CSR discourse, GRI, prevailing caring actor
rearrangements, twelve new jobs will regulations)
be created in other parts of the Constructing layoffs as an act
Suomen Rehu Group. (La nnen conducted with the consent of
tehtaat, 2005, p. 9) employees

Presence of emotions: The measures 8 (4%) 7 (28%) (Re)constructing the emotional/

initiated towards the end of the moral discourse and, therefore,
previous fiscal year in order to reduce providing an element which has
the overcapacity in our packaging the potential for dissension and
machinery manufacturing were change
stinging, however in that
circumstances indispensable.
(Elecster, 1995, p. 2)

Argument from internal authority: As 41 (20%) 16 (64%)

a result of the codetermination
negotiations that were held last
autumn, a total of 34 employees were
laid off at the Raahe factory. (PKC
Group, 2005, p. 19)

Argument from external authority: In 3 (1%)h 3 (12%)h

the context of personnel reductions,
Stora Enso will follow a consistent
approach, tailored to the legal
requirements and redundancy
practices of the countries in which it
operates. (StoraEnso, 2005, p. 29).
a
Italics added by the author.
b
Same account/report can include several strategies and techniques. Same technique can be repeated several times in any one account/report.
c
The list of techniques is not exhaustive, but is based on frequency and strategic importance of any one technique.
d
The figure covers all accounts/reports referring to the terms: efficiency/effectiveness, streamlining and the Finnish verb ka
ynnista

a (initiate), commonly used with meaning of switching
on a machine.
e
The figure covers all accounts/reports which do not explicitly refer to either making somebody redundant or reducing personnel.

T. Vuontisja
f
The figure covers all accounts/reports where none of the techniques presented under moralisation strategy were detected.
g
The figure does not cover accounts/reports with sheer reference to collaborative negotiations.
h
The figure does not include references to collaborative negotiations, even if they are also a legal obligation in the Finnish context.

rvi
Argumentation and socially questionable business practices
from the prestige of a specific internal action programme,
which implies that layoffs are a strategic, rather than one-off
decision, in order to further increase the acceptability of the
utility function. By this strategy, companies (re)actualised and
(re)produced the common discourse in contemporary manage-
ment and macroeconomics literature, which sees downsizing
as a way for a company to become more productive and
efficient (see McKinley et al., 1998). It should be noted in this
context, that this view has been contested; several studies
have suggested that employee downsizing may actually have a
deleterious impact on an organisations profitability (see e.g.
Cascio & Young, 2003; De Meuse, Vanderheiden, & Bergmann,
1994; Guthrie & Datta, 2008). It can undermine long-term
competitive advantage by eroding skill bases, disrupting orga-
nisational relationship networks, demoralising and eliciting
negative responses on the part of survivors (Datta, Guthrie,
Basuli, & Pandey, 2010; Guthrie & Datta, 2008).
The example below is one of the many, which presented
layoffs explicitly or implicitly as a means to an end, such as,
improving results or efficiency. The action programme (under the term efficiency programme) implicitly in the
and the newly appointed Managing Director are referred to as
an authority.
Belttons subsidiary Wulff pursued its action programme
of aiming to improve the results. Juha Broman took up
position as Wulffs Managing Director with the goal to
strengthen Wulffs sales organisation and to improve
the efficiency of sales support services through staff
reductions. (Beltton, 2005, p. 3)
Improving efficiency and other terms, such as, stream-
lining can be seen as deriving from the thinking behind the
common organisational imagery, the organisation as a
machine. This view of business tends to see employees as
interchangeable parts (Clancy, 1999) and is commonly attrib-
uted to Frederic Taylors Scientific Management, which advo-
cates an approach based on control, predictability,
rationality and standardisation to details (Morgan, 2006).
This together with the means-ends argument can, however,
encourage a depersonalised and dehumanised view of
employee relationships, and contribute to creating work-
places, where employees are treated as replaceable objects,
rather than human beings.
In the way illustrated in this section, the (re)actualised
discourse, that is, downsizing as a positive management
strategy, promoted the value of an economic perspective
over all other viewpoints, implicitly reflecting the knowl-
edge of the market economy and relying on taken-for-
granted ideas from this sphere. From this perspective,
the market is constituted as a reality rather than as the
product of social construction (see Gibson-Graham, 2000).
Knowledge of market includes understanding of and conform-
ing to its natural laws, for example, the need for profit,
unlimited growth and norms of efficiency and effectiveness
(see Livesey, 2002a). Thus, the market functions as an osten-
sibly neutral and apolitical arbiter of competing social inter-
ests (see Livesey, 2002b).
Normalisation
Vaara et al. (2006), in their research exploring the media
coverage of a pulp and paper sector merger, suggested that
305
rendering something normal or natural is a strategy meriting
special recognition and, therefore, developed a category for
normalisation strategies. They defined this category, how-
ever, by referring to exemplarity (similar cases in future or
past), which differs from the definition of this study. In this
research, the core technique for this strategy was the cate-
gorisation of downsizing with other business practices, such
as, new investments, taking into use new technology or
improving customer services. Alternatively, layoffs were
categorised with other factors potentially affecting the
results of the company, such as, new clients or increases
in the volume of production. Both ways worked to normalise
layoffs as a routine management strategy. Thus, normalisa-
tion tended to support the rationalisation strategy presented
previously.
The normalisation strategy was distinguished in 59% of the
accounts. In the sample extract below, layoffs are implicitly
present, and categorised under the umbrella term efficiency
measures. The text goes further, however, and places layoffs
same category with another, perhaps less controversial effi-
ciency measure from an ethical point of view, that is, selling
and renting back a warehouse.
Kesko Food responded to the competition by starting
several efficiency measures during the year. At the begin-
ning of the year it sold and rented back its central ware-
house property and started an efficiency programme aiming
at savings of over EUR 20 million. (Kesko, 2005, p. 2)
In the text extract, normalisation strategy supports the
rationalisation strategy, as the text implicitly connects
layoffs with efficiency gains.
The normalisation of layoffs as business as usual, as
nothing exceptional or extraordinary, can be seen as con-
tributing to supporting the deinstitutionalisation of relatively
permanent employment contracts (see Ahmadjian & Robin-
son, 2001), which Finnish working life has traditionally been
relying on (see Lamsa, 2001). It can also increase insecurity
and stress levels at workplaces, and lead to decreased levels
of loyalty and commitment among employees (e.g. Lewin,
2003).
Inevitability
Inevitability corresponds with what Suddaby and Greenwood
(2005) called cosmological, in their theorising on rhetorical
strategies (see also Erkama & Vaara, 2010). Cosmological
explanations for a business undertaking emphasize inevit-
ability because of forces beyond the agency of immediate
actors and audience, and often describe an action as a
natural process of evolution or consequence of globalisation.
The globalisation discourse relies upon the trope of inevi-
table change in the face of inexorable external pressure (Fiss
& Hirsch, 2005), such as, increased competition and need for
cost-efficiency, and is commonly used to justify restructuring
or offshoring operations (see Erkama & Vaara, 2010).
The inevitability strategy can be seen as present in 41% of
the detected downsizing accounts. The core techniques to
form this strategy were; choice of words, organism metaphor,
fact-consequence argument and argument from external
authority. Organism metaphor most commonly worked to
306
create an association between the company and a living
organism that is conditioned by its environment (see Clancy,
1999; Morgan, 2006). Alternatively, references to the com-
panys need to regain its health can be seen as associating
the economic performance of the company and the idea of a
persons health (Clancy, 1999). Thus, it helped to add a sense
of unavoidability to the healing action, that is, the reduction
of personnel. Fact-consequence argument presented layoffs
as a consequence of certain facts, such as, a specific program
or collaborative negotiations. Argument from external
authority typically complemented the organism metaphor,
by referring to the prestige of markets, in order to gain a
sense of acceptability for downsizing. The inevitability strat-
egy works for diminishing corporate responsibility of the act,
and tended to build an image of the company at the mercy of
markets. Moreover, this strategy tended to intertwine with
rationalisation strategy and, therefore, often describe cor-
porate efficiency and profitability needs as inevitable con-
sequences of market demands.
The example below is based on the straightforward choice
of words, an absolute necessity and inevitably, and uses construct that world (Kumra, 1996).
the passive mode and fact-consequence argument to further
enhance the deterministic impact.
Expenditure on personnel is a considerable cost item in
production. Thus, transferring manufacturing to countries
with significantly lower wage costs is an absolute necessi-
ty. This has inevitably led to a reduction in production jobs
in Finnish operations. . . (Efore, 2005, p. 6)
More typically, however, disclosures present downsizing as
an adaptation strategy to the corporate environment. The
example below comes from a company, which has been
targeted in the Finnish media, after its decision to close a
factory, claimed to be profitable by employees represen-
tatives (see TEK, 2005) and expand its operations in low-cost
countries. The company intends, however, to further con-
tinue its rationalisation measures. The employees repre-
sentatives stated that the company is not in crisis and that
they will resist layoffs (Karvonen, 2006).
The Board of Directors of the Company decided in its
meeting on 6 February 2006 to continue to adapt its pro-
duction to match demand and will start up measures to
regain the health of its loss-making operations in countries
that are considered as high-cost. A rationalisation pro-
gramme was commenced in Finland with an aim to achieve
annual savings of approximately EUR 25 million starting
from the beginning of 2007. The company seeks to achieve
the savings target by boosting operational efficiency, and
reducing the number of personnel. (Perlos, 2005, p. 60)
The text utilises the metaphor of the organisation as a
living organism, to create a feeling of inevitability. It does
so by referring to the adaptation of its operations and to the
need to regain the health of them. Demand and, there- regard to employee treatment in the context of layoffs, and
fore, markets are here presented as an authority. The exam-
ple intertwines with rationalisation strategy, as it connects
layoffs to ends, such as, efficiency and rationalisation. ees only as a cost factor. No report referred to possible negative
The key concepts of organism imagery are similar to
evolution, borrowing from Darwin and Herbert Spencers
Social Darwinism, which sees competitive economic struggle
for existence as the engine for progress (Clancy, 1999), and it
T. Vuontisja
rvi
is commonsense business thinking to believe that companies
fail because of their ill adaptation and that the strong must,
and will, succeed.
In this way, downsizing as an adaptation strategy privi-
leged the economic rationale and constructed market as a
totalising ethos and an irresistible disciplinary force (see
Livesey, 2002a). From this perspective, the company saw
itself not as an agent of, but rather as subject to, market-
place exigencies (see Deetz, 1992).
As Clancy (1999) points out, the metaphor can be a good
excuse for avoiding a lot of hard work and difficult thinking.
Its inherent degree of determinism may have such an impact
that the company does not bother to seriously consider any
alternative means to redundancies, or make an effort to keep
them to a minimum. Furthermore, Kumra (1996) argues that
to suggest that organisations need to adapt to their envir-
onments is misleading, as it tends to neglect the fact that
organisations and their members are not simply reacting to
forces operating in an external world, but rather that they
are active participants operating in concert with others to
Emotional/moral distancing
Emotional and moral distancing can be seen as a counter
strategy for pathos, that is, emotional and moral claims,
drawing from Aristotles (1954) classic rhetoric (see also
Erkama & Vaara, 2010). The strategy aims at distancing
employee layoffs from human concerns and contemporary
ethical/CSR discourse. The core techniques for this strategy
were: the evasive choice of words, omission, and dissociation
by reversal of pairs. This strategy can be seen as being
present in one of these forms in nearly all the detected
accounts. Evasive choice of words was commonly in the
corporate accounts in the form of replacing explicit terms,
such as, laying off employees with more positive terms, like
efficiency measures or adaptation of production, illus-
trating the potential benefits of the act for business or
reflecting its perceived inevitability. Typically, omission took
the form of missing information with regard to help offered to
employees or lack of emotional qualifiers. Dissociation by
reversal of pairs is implicit in the rationalisation strategy, as
presenting downsizing as a means to achieving economic
financial ends, can be seen as automatically containing a
dissociation from the consequences ordinary people tend to
associate with layoffs, that is, the negative impacts on
individuals and society.
In most accounts of downsizing, companies tended to avoid
bringing layoffs to a human or CSR context. There were no
straightforward regrets expressed to employees who have
been, or will be left without a job, or to communities, which
may suffer from redundancies. There were no explicit state-
ments concerning possible efforts to avoid or minimise layoffs.
Moreover, most companies omitted any information with
even if they did not, the disclosures tended to lack emotional
qualifiers, and sometimes presented measures to help employ-
impacts on the local community or any help provided for it.
In addition, layoffs were not always reported as a part of
personnel section and, thus, were distanced from other
employee related disclosures. More commonly, however,
Argumentation and socially questionable business practices
companies tended to distance downsizing from CSR or ethics
(see section Choice, presence, presentation). None of the
companies mentioned layoffs in their CSR section, and only
two accounts explicitly connected corporate responsibility
or ethics to layoffs elsewhere in the report (examples of
these are presented under the moralisation strategy).
Moralisation
Moralisation as an argumentation strategy refers to legitima-
tion by specific values in the previous research (Siltaoja &
Vehkapera , 2010; Vaara et al., 2006; Van Leeuwen & Wodak,
1999). In this paper, moralisation strategy also corresponds
with what Erkama and Vaara (2010), drawing from Aristotle
(1954), called ethos, that is, emotional and moral argu-
ments. Here, the strategy means creating a sense of accept-
ability by referring to feelings, such as, expressing regrets
with regard to layoffs. Alternatively, action was legitimated
by drawing from the contemporary CSR discourse by refer-
ring, for example, to employees role in the decision-making
or any measures implemented in order to help employees.
The core argumentation technique used which forms the
basis for this strategy is presence of moral or emotional
elements. The technique of presence was often fused and
thus enhanced by an argument from internal or external
authority. For example, the reference to collaborative nego-
tiations introduces a moral element to the text, as employee
participation can be seen as an indicator of procedural
justice or fairness (see e.g. GRI, 2002; Rousseau & Aquino,
1993). At the same time, this reference can be interpreted,
however, as an argument from internal authority. In a similar
way, a reference to legal requirements brings a moral ele-
ment into the text, but it also plays the role of an argument
from external authority. This strategy was commonly inter-
twined with the inevitability strategy as, in this context,
downsizing was often presented as unavoidable or as a
consequence of collaborative negotiations, rather than an
active decision by the management.
According to Perelman (2005), selecting certain aspects
for presentation implies that they are important. He suggests
further, however, that the length of the presentation, repeti-
tion and providing details helps to attach more weight to the
matter. In these terms, moralisation strategy remained weak
and incomplete, as it was present only in minority of
accounts, and was generally characterised with brief pre-
sence, lack of details and neglect of individual narratives
with regard to those who were left without a job.
Argument from internal authority, in the form of refer-
ence to negotiations with employees, was a commonly used
argumentation technique. Collaborative negotiations, in the
context of downsizing, are a compulsory routine measure in
Finland. Their presentation in the text, however, tended to
implicitly legitimise layoffs and implemented measures by
implying that they have been conducted with the consent of
employees and with their cooperation. In this way, reference
to collaboration negotiations was often providing support for
the rationalisation strategy.
There were, however, 19 (9%) accounts which can be seen
as expressing an emotion, and/or which specified how
employees were treated. In eight out of those twelve com-
panies who disclosed either of these elements, the colla-
borative negotiations have concerned more than hundred
307
employees and as many as seven of those eight conducted
further redundancies in the following year. Whereas each of
these companies received some publicity in the media, in
four cases, the company had faced intensive negative media
coverage, either with its previous large-scale redundancies
or the ones conducted during the year. The reason why these
elements were inserted into key financial and economic
disclosures may be, therefore, that the continuous redun-
dancies were seen as having the potential of negative pub-
licity to an extent which could have an impact on the
companys legitimacy, and in this way, could, perhaps, also
pose a threat to its financial and economic prospects.
Most of the eight accounts, where an emotional element
had been included, were limited to expressing brief regrets,
referring to difficult or heavy decisions in their CEOs
speech. The regrets tended, however, to remain vague,
and often there was a need to check the terms used in the
context of layoffs in other parts of the report, or in the
background material to confirm that these regrets were,
indeed, connected to the layoffs. For example, if the com-
pany referred to difficult changes, whether a change was
the word commonly used elsewhere in the report or in the
background material in the context of layoffs, was checked
to ensure that the regrets were likely to refer to layoffs.
Moreover, in most cases, regrets seem to refer to the incon-
venience which making the decision to downsize had caused
to managers, rather than to the negative impacts this deci-
sion would have on the employees. In each case, as the
example below illustrates, the CEOs stressed the necessity
of the actions taken or that the steps taken were the right
ones to take or leading in the right direction.
Perlos has responded to this change by investing in the
growing markets of China and Central America and by
adapting its production in Finland. Looking back, we made
these painful decisions and investments at the right
time.(Perlos, 2005, p. 9)
Only 13 accounts (6%) were detected, which concerned
employee treatment, and which can be seen to have an
aspect of deontological ethics. Deontological ethics assesses
the morality of an action on the basis of the motives of the
actor. In contrast to utilitarian ethics, it is based on the belief
that ethics involves operating with a sense of duty rather
than on the basis of self-interest (see e.g. Jones, 2003).
Those disclosures referred, albeit often briefly, to treatment
of employees, or specified means to help, such as, retirement
arrangements, or transferring employees to new tasks,
retraining, outplacement support or severance payment. In
this way, they can be seen as mobilising CSR discourse,
discussed in the current CSR literature and practical guide-
lines, such as, Global Reporting Initiative (GRI, 2006) indi-
cator protocols. Even in these cases, emotional/moral
distancing strategy seem to often be present, as the language
tended to be neutral, emotional qualifiers tended to be
lacking, the focus was on groups and numbers and not on
individuals.
Only two of these accounts explicitly referred to the
concept of CSR or ethics. The first one comes from a big
forest sector company, listed in sustainability and ethical
indexes (Dow Jones Sustainability and FTSE4Good), which
had announced its intention to reduce about 5000 employees
308
in the Europe. The reference to CSR and ethics was made
through argument from internal authority, that is, with
reference to corporate-wide guidelines.
Stora Enso has introduced corporate-wide guidelines for
workforce reductions, the aim of which is to guarantee,
within the whole company group, a downsizing process
which is as ethical and responsible as possible (Stor-
aEnso, 2005, p. 29).
Corporate AR did not, however, elaborate the matter
further, but was content to refer to a separate CSR report
for further details.
Another explicit reference to CSR comes from a big com-
pany, which had been targeted by the media with regard to
its previous large-scale redundancies (see Aaltonen, 2005).
The acceptance is built by argument from authority, in this
case by reference to the personnel representatives with
whom the appropriate measures to downsize were planned,
and providing an impression that personnel reductions were
accepted by personnel. Argument from authority was also
present in the form of reference to legal requirements.
Security in change legislation includes an action programme
drawn together by an employer and employees, enhanced
information, full pay for an employee when looking for a new
job, and additional pay on top of the unemployment com-
pensation for the time the action plan is implemented (Arnkil
et al., 2007).
Measures for situations requiring staff reductions were
planned and agreed with personnel representatives.
These exceed the requirements of the new security in
change legislation, The leading principle is that the
company also bears its responsibility when personnel is
reduced and human beings will not be left without sup-
port. (Elisa, 2005, p. 12).
The text extract above is also one of only two accounts
which bring in both the elements of duty and feeling. Expres-
sion of feeling can be seen as present through the explicit
connection which the text extract makes between layoffs and
employees need for support. It is worth noting, that the text
extract also merits the employees with the status of a human
being (ihminen), which has a transcendent value in virtually
all cultures (Clancy, 1999) and is thus, as a term, more difficult
to objectify than terms, such as, employee or personnel
which reflect the status and relationship of these groups within
the company. Even here, the reference was, however, made to
the general principle, and the actual redundancies which have
taken place during the year were not described in this context,
but separately in the board review.
Another account which referred to a sense of duty and,
at the same time, had the feeling element involved comes
from a company whose decision to close a factory in Finland
and expand its production in low-cost countries attracted a
lot of media attention (e.g. Albayrak, 2005; Boxberg, 2005;
Mykka nen, 2005a). According to the concerned trade-unions,
the factory was profitable (TEK, 2005). The decision came,
therefore, as a complete surprise to the employees (Myk-
ka
nen, 2005a).
Therefore, as a result of co-determination negotiations,
Perlos had to make the painful decision to shut down the
Ylo rvi plant during the first quarter of 2006. The financial
ja
T. Vuontisja
rvi
position of the employees made redundant was safe-
guarded with a social package that also includes a sever-
ance pay. In addition, Perlos sought to support the coping of
the personnel in as many ways as possible. Among other
things, Perlos was among the first wave of Finnish compa-
nies to adopt the new change security introduced in the
latest incomes policy settlement, which supports employ-
ees opportunities to find new employment. Employees
have also been offered new tasks within Perlos. (Perlos,
2005, p. 23).
This example briefly mentions the emotional side of lay-
offs by referring to a painful decision. It also uses words,
such as, safeguarding and supporting, which can be seen
as involving both elements of duty and caring. There is,
however, no reference to the individual and the extent to
which measures were taken into use is not revealed. Argu-
ment from internal authority is present in terms of reference
to co-determination negotiations, implicating that the deci-
sion was made in agreement with personnel. Moreover, the
disclosure refers to the argument from external authority, as
it promotes the company as an actor, which acts in accor-
dance with the prevailing regulations and being among the
very first to apply the new rules.
Even if the morality strategy, as defined in this paper,
tended to remain weak, it does not mean, however, that
there were no moral aspects in the disclosures, but rather
that the moral of disclosures tends to derive from the ethics
in neoclassical economics. Overall, neoclassical economics
maintains that the greatest social satisfaction or good occurs
when different actors are free to pursue their own self-
interest in economic activity (see Swanson, 1995). The only
disclosure referring to the potential impacts of downsizing on
society, coming from an information technology company,
which was criticised for its continuous layoffs by a trade
union representative (Mykka nen, 2005b), provides the most
explicit example of this. The disclosure utilises the means-
ends argument. It associates the aim of improving the com-
panys competitiveness, which has taken place by global
sourcing, with a further positive outcome, that is, to main-
tain jobs in countries like Finland.
By improving its competitiveness through global sourcing,
TietoEnator is able to retain jobs and maintain growth in
higher-cost countries as well. (TietoEnator 2005, p. 38).
At the same time with global sourcing, which in this
context refers to transferring operations to low-cost coun-
tries, the company has reduced its number of employees in
Finland and in other high-cost countries. It should be noted
that the trend of offshoring has been described by opponents
as new brutalism (see Morgan, 2006). It has been argued
that offshoring leads to wealth creation for shareholders but
not necessarily for countries and employees (Levy, 2005).
Conclusion and discussion
This paper aims to contribute to the recent stream of CSR
research, which has explored the discursive construction of
questionable business undertakings (e.g. Joutsenvirta &
Vaara, 2009; Makela & Nasi, 2010; Siltaoja & Vehkapera ,
2010). The paper illustrates in detail argumentation strate-
gies and techniques used to (re)legitimise a contested
Argumentation and socially questionable business practices
business practice in corporate mainstream economic/finan-
cial reports; an approach which has not received much
attention in previous research. Furthermore, it adds to pre-
vious research by suggesting that, in their hard-core financial
and economic talk, corporations attempt to (re)produce
hegemonic control by (re) constructing a socially question-
able undertaking in the framework of markets and share-
holder relations. The paper further contributes by
maintaining that the scale and frequency of the questionable
undertaking may have an impact on whether the company
makes an effort to discursively integrate expressions of
feeling or sense of duty in the text. Moreover, the paper
goes on by suggesting, that even if references to these
elements remained succinct, their presentation together
with financial objectives may still open up a space for
potential dissension and change.
The findings of this analysis are three-fold. First, drawing
from The New Rhetoric (Perelman & Olbrecths-Tyteca, 2006),
the research illustrates the argumentation techniques which
corporate accounts on downsizing in ARs use, such as, choice
of words, categorising, presence, omission, argument from
authority, fact-consequence and means-ends argument,
metaphors, and dissociation by reversal of pairs. Second,
on the basis of these techniques, analysis forwards to dis-
tinguish five larger argumentation patterns: rationalisation,
normalisation, inevitability, emotional/moral distancing and
moralisation. Third, the analysis makes an attempt to reveal
the power implications of the utilised strategies, and the
discourses they (re)actualise or marginalise.
This research has focused on employee downsizing within
the context of companies having laid off in Finland. The
sample companies, with few exceptions, operated, however,
in several countries in the focus year. Moreover, the frame-
work of business and CSR discourses from which the compa-
nies draw in their disclosures is predominantly international.
I believe, therefore, that the analysis contributes more
generally to understanding how corporations legitimise a
questionable business undertaking in their mainstream finan-
cialeconomic disclosures, and the potential power implica-
tions of this.
From the perspective of critical discourse analysis, the
corporations can be seen as engaged in discourses, which
constitute social identities, social relations, and the knowl-
edge and meaning systems of the social world (Fairclough,
1992, 1995). On the basis of the analysis in this paper, corpora-
tions dominantly portrayed themselves as rational actors.
Rationalisation commonly took the form of pragmatic argu-
ment. It portrayed downsizing as a means to achieving positive
economic ends, such as, increased efficiency and profitability.
Corporate argumentation, under this strategy, typically drew
from the taken-for-granted ideas, which implicitly reflect the
knowledge of the market economy; this includes understand-
ing of and conforming to its natural laws, for example, the
need for profit, unlimited growth and norms of efficiency (see
Livesey, 2002a). In this way, companies (re)actualised the
dominant discourse of contemporary management and macro-
economics literature, which presents downsizing as a strategy
to produce value for the shareholders (see McKinley et al.,
1998). This discourse was further enhanced by the use of
sleeping metaphors, which have got detached from their
origins and established themselves in a new context, such as,
efficiency or streamlining. In the text these metaphors can further marginalise employees and local communities as
309
be seen as implicitly creating a parallel between the company
and a machine. They worked to create an impression that when
laying off employees, the company was functioning in a
machine-like, orderly and rational way towards achieving its
set economicfinancial ends.
Normalisation, inevitability and emotional/moral distan-
cing intertwined and provided support to rationalisation.
Normalisation categorised layoffs together with other man-
agement practices, such as, improving customer services or
selling and renting back a warehouse. Thus, layoffs were
rendered normal; they were presented as if they were noth-
ing extraordinary, but only one of the many routine manage-
ment practices. In turn, inevitability inserted a degree of
determinism into the text. Perhaps most importantly, inevit-
ability strategy was embedded in the text in the form of
metaphors, which suggest that the organisation is like a living
organism. The use of the term adaptation helped to create
the impression that the downsizing company is at the mercy
of market forces, in the same way as a living organism is
dependent on its environment for survival (Clancy, 1999;
Morgan, 2006). When intertwined with rationalisation, this
strategy gave an impression of the inevitability of efficiency
and profitability demands in the context of markets. More-
over, emotional/moral distancing can be seen as infiltrating
nearly all the accounts in one form or another, as the
language tended to be evasive, layoffs were commonly
represented as the means to achieving positive ends, and
references to human concerns, such as, regrets or measures
to help employees, were commonly omitted. In this way,
emotional/moral distancing may help to persuade the reader
to believe, that layoffs either did not have any negative
social consequences, or that they were not at a scale worth
mentioning, repeating or writing at length.
In corporate downsizing accounts, these strategies can be
seen as helping to (re)produce asymmetrical power relation-
ships between shareholders and other stakeholders. They
seem to work to implicitly promote corporate governance
models, typically identified as the Anglo-American, which
emphasize the interest of shareholders. At the same time,
they appear to marginalise traditional Nordic stakeholder
models, where the shareholders were expected to support
the company in overcoming any crisis, if possible, without
downsizing (see Erkama & Vaara, 2010). Rationalisation por-
trayed layoffs as a means to achieving increased economic
performance, which would yield benefits representing added
value to shareholders. The companies also seemed to weaken
employees and local communities position by implicitly
questioning and distancing themselves from the traditional
social contract of the company as a provider of long-term
employment for employees and tax revenues for commu-
nitiesa development which has been already underway in
many countries, including Finland. This was done essentially
by normalisation, which categorised layoffs as being just one
of many day-to-day management practices. If layoffs are
seen to be normal management practice, the likeliness
for them to be a recurrent practice is implicitly increased.
In this way, normalisation contributed to marginalising or
excluding other possible discourses in the context, such as,
downsizing as an aberration of normal terms, or an act of the
last resort to thwart organisational demise (see Cameron
et al., 1993). Emotional/moral distancing, in turn, worked to
310
important stakeholders, as many reports were completely
ignoring the negative impact which downsizing is likely to
have on these stakeholder groups. Indeed, local communities
were not given any presence in disclosures.
The special interest of this paper has been in how social
issues are integrated into corporate hard-core financial talk.
In comparison with other strategies, the moralisation strat-
egy remained incomplete, as any references which appear to
refer to feelings or draw from contemporary CSR discourse
tended to remain succinct and lack detail. The disclosures did
not imply that acting to minimise layoffs or that any help
provided for those affected by layoffs, employees or local
communities, would be considered as a taken-for-granted
duty of companies or an essential part of their CSR or
personnel policies.
There were occasions when disclosures can, however, be
seen as bringing emotional aspects or a sense of duty or
even caring into the text. Most commonly, expression of
emotions took the form of presenting somewhat vague
regrets, such as, referring to painful or difficult decisions.
As a rule, elements of duty or caring can be seen as being
inserted into the text in the form of describing how employ-
ees were helped. It can be suggested that these elements
bring into the text traces of arguments which opponents to
downsizing, such as affected employees and communities,
commonly present (see for example Erkama & Vaara, 2010;
Makela
& Nasi, 2010). The presence of these elements tended
to depend on the scale and frequency of redundancies. These
disclosures may, therefore, reflect managements effort to
bridge the clash between different discursive domains as a
result of extensive media attention or an anticipation of that.
At the same time, however, presenting these elements, in the
same account or report where downsizing was commonly
portrayed as a means to achieving financial aims, can also
be seen as introducing an element of ambiguity and instabil-
ity into the disclosures and, therefore, the potential for
resistance and change (see Fairclough, 1992, 1995).
From a Foucauldian view, the concept of CSR itself can be
seen as representing a space of dissension and socio-political
struggle where competing discourses are joined (see Hajer,
1995; Livesey, 2002a). In this view, companies can be seen as
active participants in establishing what CSR means in public
discussions, where the concept is continuously (re)defined
(see Palazzo & Scherer, 2006). It can be suggested that the
current CSR concept reflects the corporate impact on it, as it
tends to be devoted, both in theory and practice, to
the leitmotif of wealth creation (Windsor, 2001), that is,
the promotion of the viewpoint that CSR contributes to the
financial performance of businesses. This may facilitate
companies to cherry-pick certain aspects of CSR for pre-
sentation, which help to reinforce the business discourse on
the primacy of economic profitability. In the corporate dis-
closures explored in this research, parts of the moralisation
strategy seem to work straightforwardly to further legitimise
the rational argument, rather than bring in the negative
aspects of layoffs and illustrate the companys efforts to
alleviate those. This is the case with regard to references to
collaborative negotiations, which can be suggested to derive
from contemporary CSR discourse, as employee participation
can be seen as an indicator of procedural justice or fairness
(see e.g. Rousseau & Aquino, 1993). Corporate disclosures
commonly referred to these negotiations, but employees
T. Vuontisja
rvi
were still given no voice; their explicit demands or concerns
were not presented in the text. These references tended,
therefore, to provide the impression that layoffs and how
they were implemented had received the full consent of
employees. Earlier research has, however, suggested that
employees representatives in Finland find their chances to
have an impact on the results of collaborative negotiations
poor (Kairinen, Uhmavaara, & Finne, 2005). Moreover, they
also tended to estimate that the decision to downsize was
essentially done before the negotiations even started.
It should be noted, that various forms of help to employ-
ees, referred or alluded to by the companies in this research,
such as, a severance payment, outplacement services,
supporting the coping of the personnel or not leaving
human beings without support may also work in the direction
of promoting acceptance of the management discourse (see
e.g. Hardy, 1985). The details and the extent to which these
measures were applied to were commonly not provided.
Therefore, there may be cases, in which help has remained
nominal, but is still presented to create acceptance for the
decision to downsize. Moreover, the help offered may have
potentially included elements, such as, internal or external
counselling or stress management programmes (see e.g. Bell
& Taylor, 2011; GRI, 2006). Each of these may serve to
discipline people into appropriate behaviours (see Foote &
Frank, 1999). Scholars (Bell & Taylor, 2011; see also Ainsworth
& Hardy, 2009) have suggested, that the dominant psycho-
logical discourses, which encourage individuals to overcome
their grief through therapeutic techniques, such as self-help,
and inducing conformity to a model of normal grieving
behaviour (Rose, 1990), serve to direct responsibility back
to the individual and discourage the attribution of collective
responsibility for downsizing or unemployment. In this way,
the grief which has the potential to act as an empowering
resource to challenge established power relations, is sup-
pressed.
More research is needed to focus on the potential for the
opponent groups to challenge business discourse in the con-
text of questionable business undertaking. Erkama (2010)
focused, for instance, on an industrial shutdown case, and
argues that even if the resisting groups are rarely able to
reverse management decisions, they may still be able to
broaden the discourse themes. In the explored case, the
discourse themes were originally reduced to the future
potential found in a cheap labour country, but the resisting
groups were able to introduce themes, such as, local profit-
ability and production quality. In this way, they also
managed to contribute to the evolution of the organisational
ideology. Spicer and Fleming (2007) examined resistance to
the process of restructuring in a public sector organisation.
They described how oppositional groups can challenge the
apparent inevitability of globalisation discourse through a
range of discursive tactics. They suggest that these groups
play an important role in the restructuring of public sector
organisations in a manner that can transform the discourse of
globalisation.
Ainsworth and Hardy (2009) research results, with regard
to the potential for resistance were, however, more dismal.
They studied unemployed older workers and how they are
regulated by dominant discourses. They maintain that
although some research has shown that the juxtaposition
of different discourses opens up space for resistance, this was
Argumentation and socially questionable business practices
not the case with regard to the aging unemployed. Any
efforts of this group to resist were played down by the
dominant discourses. Physical discourse inferred that the
loss of work for older workers would be permanent, whereas
psychotherapeutic discourse suggested that the solution to
unemployment lay in the mind of older workers themselves.
The earlier studies have used material, such as interviews,
speeches, media releases, and transcripts of public hearings
to explore the potential for resistance and change. Spicer
and Fleming (2007) collected part of their data from the
annual reports of a public sector organisation. Further
research is needed, however, to explore how and for what
reasons the elements of discursive struggle become
embedded in the private corporations financial and eco-
nomic talk. Furthermore, research needs to focus on whether
and, in what conditions, the presentation of human concerns
in the proximity of financial aims actually works to provide a
space for resistance and change, rather than advances the
opposite end, that is, promotes the acceptance of business
discourse.
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