Abstract/Summary

Examining a corpus of integrated reports considered best practice corporate reporting, this study explores how the notion of capital and its novel extension into six capitals, including human, social & relationship and natural capitals, are discursively constructed and legitimized in collective business thinking. Our findings show that while the ‘new’ capitals are mentioned frequently, this happens in a bullet-point way without elaboration on their significance – a response strategy that we call management by keywords. The analysis confirms that the collective business mindset remains centred on financial value creation with the ‘new’ capitals acting as mere ‘servants’ to financial objectives. This questions the transformative power of six capitals – hailed as a business innovation – to move corporate practices towards more sustainability and enhanced accountability. At the conceptual and methodological level, the study showcases the potential of corpus linguistics for fostering interdisciplinary research involving linguists, business and accounting scholars.