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Sustainability reporting after the Sustainability

reporting after
Costa Concordia disaster: a disaster

a multi-theory study on legitimacy,

impression management and 1909
image restoration Received 22 May 2018
Revised 5 April 2020
Accepted 17 June 2020
Laura Corazza and Elisa Truant
Department of Management, Universit
a degli Studi di Torino, Torino, Italy
Simone Domenico Scagnelli
School of Business and Law, Edith Cowan University, Joondalup, Australia, and
Chiara Mio
Department of Management, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Venice, Italy

Abstract
Purpose – Can sustainability disclosures be a tool for executing image restoration strategies after corporate
manslaughter? This is the question explored in this study of Costa Crociere’s sustainability reports after the
Concordia disaster.
Design/methodology/approach – Merging traditional textual content analysis with visual analysis and
supported by machine learning tools, this is a predominantly qualitative study framed by legitimacy theory,
image restoration theory and impression management.
Findings – Costa Crociere’s voluntary sustainability reporting is strongly influenced by a mix of text and
visual signals that distract readers’ attention from the disaster. A “nothing really happened” communication
strategy pervades the disclosures, with the only rational motivation being to change perceptions and erase
memories of this tragic and avoidable event.
Research limitations/implications – Although the analysis covered multiple sources of corporate
information, media coverage was not one of them. A more in-depth exploration of sustainability reporting in the
cruise industry, including evidence of similar cases, to test impression management theory would be a
worthwhile avenue for future research.
Social implications – While Costa Crociere technically followed the customary guidelines of disclosing
human resource impacts, there was almost no acknowledgement of the people involved in the accident. Costa
Concierevastly understated their responsibility for the accident, did not apologize, and conveyed very little
remorse. The majority of disclosures centred on disaster recovery management.
Originality/value – The authors discuss why and how a company can overcome a legitimacy threat by
completely freezing its voluntary sustainability reporting, and the authors show how a company can restore its
image by minimizing specific aspects of an accident and shifting attention from the human victims to corporate
operations. Incorporating image recognition driven by AI models and combining the results with narrative
disclosures contributes an innovative and original analysis technique to the field of impression management. In
addition, this research also contributes to our knowledge on the cruise industry – a sector currently under
scrutiny for its ethical, social and environmental practices.
Keywords Legitimacy, Content analysis, Sustainability reporting, Impression management, Visual analysis,
Image restoration
Paper type Research paper

Accounting, Auditing &

We wish to thank Lisa Maire and the participants of the British Alternative Accounts Conference 2020 Accountability Journal
Vol. 33 No. 8, 2020
for their helpful comments and suggestions on the different versions of this paper. pp. 1909-1941
We would like to thank the editor and reviewers of Accounting, Audut & Accountability Journal for © Emerald Publishing Limited
0951-3574
careful reading, and constructive suggestions for our manuscript. DOI 10.1108/AAAJ-05-2018-3488
AAAJ 1. Introduction
33,8 The sustainability report of a company affected by a disaster can reveal a lot about the
legitimation, image restoration and impression management strategies of a firm. Disclosures
after a company has caused an accident, scandal or disaster can be compromised by the
underlying need to manage impressions, repair the firm’s reputation through image
restoration and preserve legitimacy – in other words, to ensure a continued licence to operate
(Bozzolan et al., 2015; Cho et al., 2015a; Diouf and Boiral, 2017). Disclosing the disaster and
1910 associated risks serves two purposes. First, it increases transparency with stakeholders and
demonstrates candour to the public and other special interest groups. Second, it, hopefully,
prevents any possible attacks that could further compromise an already threatened
legitimacy (Cho and Patten, 2007).
Although communicating bad news as well as the good can be an important signal of a
sincere commitment by an organisation to deliver the right message; many social and
environmental accounting researchers have noted that increased disclosures after a disaster
or a scandal may have more to do with regaining legitimacy and restoring the company’s
reputation than altruistic motives (Bebbington et al., 2008a; Blanc et al., 2019; Cho et al., 2015a;
Eweje and Wu, 2010; She and Michelon, 2019). Unfortunately, most studies on corporate
disclosure surrounding complex disasters and scandals employ an action-reaction model;
that is, almost all cases in the literature are framed by communications theory, legitimacy
theory or similar theories from that stream of knowledge. In this study, we have broadened
our scope to beyond just one sustainability report to analyse a wider time span. This requires
a more expansive and open theoretical approach because the consequences resulting from an
adverse event can have both immediate implications, like the risks associated with disclosure,
and years later, as is the case with many environmental impacts. A few studies have drawn
on multiple theories (Bebbington et al., 2008a; Blanc et al., 2019), but there is a substantial lack
of longitudinal and comparative research on sustainability reporting, as well as on new
methodological approaches for this type of analysis.
Reconstructing events and analysing them through a narrative framework can provide
opportunities to enrich the traditional methodologies of content analysis commonly applied
to sustainability reporting (Czarniawska, 2004, 2017). As clarified by Vourvachis and
Woodward (2015), content analysis remains a valid methodology for documenting corporate
reporting changes and, at present, has expanded from textual analysis to include a more
evolved hypertextual form of narration that incorporates images, graphs and pictures
(Davison, 2007, 2015; Davison and Warren, 2009). In this study, we have undertaken an
innovative form of content analysis that combines textual analysis with visual analysis based
on image recognition technology that can identify objects in photos, reducing subjective
interpretation by the researcher.
Our case concerns disclosures by Costa Crociere S.p.A. (hereafter “Costa”), who became
infamous in 2012 for the wreckage of the Costa Concordia, one of its largest cruise liners. The
ship crashed on the rocky Italian seabed near the island of Giglio off the coast of Tuscany,
breaching the hull and sinking the ship. The wreck would not have happened if the cruise had
stuck to its designated route, but the captain took an unauthorised deviation just to make the
cruise experience “more exciting”. Of the more than 4,000 passengers on board, 32 died of
asphyxiation by drowning and another 193 were injured. This disaster has been held up as an
example of operational malpractice and mismanagement by both the captain and the
company and has been the subject of much public scrutiny. The ensuing backlash culminated
in the Italian Supreme Court in July of 2017 sentencing the captain to 16 years in prison and
levying a V1m fine against the firm.
Over the last two decades, the cruise industry has grown rapidly, which has attracted the
interest of many researchers (Bonilla-Priego et al., 2014; De Grosbois, 2016; Font et al., 2016;
Klein, 2011). Recent studies have observed that this sector of the travel industry is among its
biggest polluters. Nor do the criticisms stop there: cruise companies have been accused of Sustainability
engaging in unsustainable practices, negatively impacting their destinations economically reporting after
and socio-politically, fostering exploitative labour conditions, failing to comply with
transnational regulatory frameworks, altering marine ecosystems and neglecting safety
a disaster
issues that result in serious injuries and even fatalities. All these concerns point to the need to
research how this sector is taking responsibility for society and the environment (Bonilla-
Priego et al., 2014).
Through the lens of visual and textual impression management, we investigate how 1911
corporate disclosure of facts and risks within sustainability reports in the cruise industry
evolved as a result of a calamity. Section 2 contains a literature review and draws connections
between legitimacy theory and image restoration theory in the context of impression
management. Section 3 sets out the research design. Section 4 presents the main findings and
a discussion followed by the conclusion ends the study.

2. Theoretical framework
2.1 Legitimacy crisis following accidents
It is widely reported in the literature that following an adverse event or scandal, corporations
follow the legitimacy theory model. The company responsible for the event – and sometimes
even the entire business sector – responds to the threat of reputational damage by increasing
their corporate communications, whether through augmenting their annual reports, issuing
stand-alone sustainability reports or (more recently) via social media (Aerts and Cormier,
2009; Blanc et al., 2019; Cho, 2009; Cho and Patten, 2007; Eweje and Wu, 2010; Melo and
Garrido-Morgado, 2012; Patten, 1992; She and Michelon, 2019; Vourvachis et al., 2016). As
demonstrated by Vourvachis et al. (2016), in only a few cases has a company decreased its
communications in traditional media (for example, in the case of Air France Flight 447, where
there was a drop in the disclosure and in the provision of positive items). Nor is the increase in
communications is a matter of perspective. Regardless of whether analyses take a social
perspective or emphasise environmental aspects, both rest their analysis on legitimacy
theory. The works of Deegan et al. (2000), Sinkovics et al. (2016) and Blanc et al. (2019)
privilege social aspects, but the majority of works adopt an environmental perspective
(Jantadej and Kent, 1999; Patten, 1992; Savage et al., 2000; Summerhays and De Villiers, 2012).
Corporate respect for the social contract is at the core of legitimacy theory (Dowling and
Pfeffer, 1975; Gray et al., 1995; Guthrie and Parker, 1989; Lindblom, 1994; Suchman, 1995). Yet
voluntary disclosures are not always used (or used solely) as a transparent proxy for
adherence to it. Instead, these communications frequently are employed to bolster the image
of the company while under siege (Cho et al., 2015b; Villiers and Van Staden, 2011). Regardless
of whether the ensuing crisis is immediate or the potential risk of the crisis has not yet become
manifest, the likelihood and the severity of the impacts can cause damage to a broad number
of stakeholders (Zyglidopoulos, 2001). Corporate understanding of how to juggle the different
instruments of sustainability disclosure following incidents is critical to balancing the need
for stakeholders to be able to make informed decisions while at the same time managing
impressions (Dhaliwal et al., 2012; Epstein, 2018). Getting the balance right and executing an
advanced impression management strategy could mean the company not only avoids
reputational damage but actually gains ground by being proactive (Mahadeo et al., 2011).
Very few studies have addressed the complexity surrounding accidents and their related
consequences in terms of impression management. Obviously, not all reactions are
organisational façades or greenwashing with negative intent. Some responses are indeed
fundamental organisational changes that represent a true commitment (
a la legitimacy
theory) to avoid future fatalities (Cho et al., 2015a). Others may be attempts to repair, regain
and even increase corporate reputation within a legitimacy framework through the
AAAJ instrumental use of corporate communications and specifically through the use of
33,8 sustainability reports (Bradford and Garrett, 1995; Michelon, 2011; O’Donovan, 2002).
Yet disclosures about adverse events cannot always be fully explained by resorting to
legitimacy theory. Most incidents are multifactorial and deeply rooted, and their causes may
have begun years ago or their consequences will continue for many years to come. This
emerges clearly in a recent study by Blanc et al. (2019) on Siemens AG’s response to its
corruption scandal. Their research is one of the first to call attention to the interactions
1912 between legitimacy theory, stakeholder theory and organisational façades to interpret the
complexity and various implications of corporate scandals.
Cho (2009) found that it is extremely important to consider a firm’s disclosure practices
over a longer period following an incident and to frame each analysis case by case with
before, during and after an evaluation of the situation. In response to Cho’s recommendation,
we build on the prior literature that looks at organisational disclosure practices following an
accident with a more in-depth investigation. We aim to extend the scope of analysis by
exploring the different causes that can potentially threaten the legitimacy of an organisation
suffering a scandal.
In particular, what seems to be lacking in the literature is a causal link between the
different strategies used and the theories that explain corporate communications during
crises. There appears to be no clear handbook for how corporate communication can be used
to reconstruct the loss of legitimacy or how this actually takes place at the sustainability
reporting level. While almost all studies on corporate wrongdoings make a comparison
between the different development stages leading up to the inevitable storm, few studies use
an analytical approach to frame the problem. In addition, although it appears that
sustainability accounting scholars do not favour corporate communication theories
(Bebbington et al., 2008a), more and more studies are using reputation management and
communications to investigate disclosure behaviours that influence public impressions
(Chasse and Boiral, 2016; Cooper and Slack, 2015; Craig and Brennan, 2012; Diouf and Boiral,
2017; Martınez-Ferrero and Garcıa-Sanchez, 2017; Martınez-Ferrero et al., 2019). Therefore,
given our particular focus, we reviewed the recent literature on image restoration theories and
impression management. The most relevant of these works are discussed in the following
sections.

2.2 Image restoration theories

Over the last 30 years, an increasing amount of research has focused on examining how
organisations and individuals react to crises so as to minimise damage to their reputation
(Arendt et al., 2017; Schlenker and Darby, 1981; Scott and Lyman, 1968; Seeger and Griffin
Padgett, 2010; Sellnow and Seeger, 2013; Sykes, 1956). Some research has been aimed at
helping practitioners design corporate messages during crises, while other studies focus on
supporting scholars and educators in critically evaluating such disclosures. Yet regardless of
their purpose or end use, most scholarship has been rooted in the extensive work of William L.
Benoit in crisis communication theory (Benoit, 1995a, 1995b, 1997, 2013; Blaney et al., 2002). In
recent years, Timothy Coombs has contributed to the development of this theory
(Coombs, 2007a).
As has been argued, there is a high probability that a corporate incident will manifest into
a corporate crisis. By corporate crisis, we mean any significant threat to a business’s
operations that can have negative consequences if not properly handled (Coombs, 2007b).
Accordingly, a threat represents the potential damage to an organisation, its stakeholders or
an industry in terms of public safety, financial loss and reputational harm (Coombs, 2015).
The consensus in the literature is that there are three main stages of a corporate crisis: (1)
the pre-crisis stage, which relates to the actions performed before a crisis happens; (2) the
actual crisis stage, which begins with a trigger event and ends when the crisis is considered to Sustainability
be resolved and (3) the post-crisis stage when the organisation considers its future actions, reporting after
revises its crisis response plans and reflects on whether its practices need to be modified to
prevent or minimise future crises (Coombs, 2014; Cho, 2009; Vourvachis et al., 2016 and Blanc
a disaster
et al., 2019).
In the literature, corporate crises are grouped and analysed according to the nature of the
event, the responsibility of the organisation and the related reputational threat (Coombs,
2007b, 2015): 1913
(1) External origin – Weak responsibility – Mild reputational threat: typically occurs when
the organisation is also a victim of the crisis. These include natural disasters,
rumours, workplace violence and external product tampering/malevolence.
(2) External/Internal origin – Minimal responsibility – Moderate reputational threat:
occurs when the organisational actions were unintentional or uncontrollable. These
include stakeholder challenges/claims, technical errors or harmful products as a
result of technical errors.
(3) Internal origin – Strong responsibility – Severe reputational threat: when the
organisation knowingly placed people at risk, took inappropriate actions or violated a
law/regulation. These include human error, harmful products as a result of human
error, organisational misdeeds with and without injuries and management
misconduct.
Organisations are increasingly talking about how they have put strategies and practices in
place to prevent, mitigate and avoid such risks, but everyday evidence speaks to the contrary,
with the Concordia disaster being a perfect example. It is also the case that, by their very
nature, image repair theories address the actual crisis stage when the facts have already
happened and the risks have already been incurred. Accordingly, in this study, we extend
prior research by analysing the changes in sustainability reporting made after a crisis of the
third kind, where avoidable human error was to blame.
In these cases, defencive messages and discourses of redirection are developed after the
crisis emerges with the specific aim of altering the audiences’ perceptions about the
responsibility of the organisation (Benoit, 1997). Benoit identifies the following range of
strategic behaviours designed to restore image at a corporate level (Benoit, 2015):
(1) Denial.

Denying having performed the act or

Blaming someone/something else for it.
(2) Evasion of responsibility.

Admitting to the act but only in defence of an offensive act by another;

Alleging a lack of information about or control over the issue;

Claiming it was an accident or

Claiming it was performed with good intentions.
(3) Minimising the offence:

Strengthening the audience’s positive feelings towards themselves to divert
attention from their negative feelings towards the organisation;

Downplaying the negative feelings associated with the wrongful act;
AAAJ
Differentiating the act from other similar but more offensive ones;
33,8
Attempting to place the act in a more favourable context so as to transcend it;

Attacking the accusers or

Compensating the victims of the act.
(4) Correction:
1914

Making plans to mitigate the fallout from the act or prevent it from occurring
again or

Making promises to do the above.
(5) Mortification:

Apologising for the act, confessing, expressing regret and begging forgiveness.
These five basic behaviours have variants, but they have all the common aim of attempting
to either change the audience’s existing beliefs or create new ones. Organisations can also
apply more than one strategy or sub-strategy in response to a crisis, whether intentionally
or not (Benoit, 2015). This is particularly true of minimisation strategies where several of
the six tactics might be deployed at once. However, it is important to remember that none of
the six involve denying that the organisation was responsible, nor is there any direct
attempt to diminish that responsibility. Consistent with the context of our study, such sub-
strategies should be found simultaneously in sustainability reports, acting together on
different playing levels and aligned with the goals of different legitimacy restoration
strategies (Hopwood, 2009).
Consistent with the works of Benoit et al. (1997) identify the following corporate response
typologies:
(1) Deny: establishing that no crisis exists, which includes attacking the accuser, denying
and asserting there is no crisis, scapegoating and blaming someone else.
(2) Diminish: altering the apparent impact of the event to make it appear less negative to
stakeholders, which includes making excuses by denying intent to do harm, claiming
an inability to control the event and/or justifying one’s actions by minimising the
perceived damage.
(3) Deal/Rebuild: altering how stakeholders perceive the organisation with the aim of
repairing one’s reputation, which includes praising/ingratiating stakeholders by
recalling past good behaviour, expressing concern, compassion and regret,
apologising and taking full responsibility and also compensating the victims.
With the exception of the work of Cho (2009), who describes three strategies of image
enhancement, avoidance/deflection and disclaimer from the perspective of legitimacy theory,
most sustainability accounting scholars have applied communication theory to sustainability
reports. Bebbington et al. (2008b) applies Benoit’s framework to analyse a single report of
Shell, finding evidence of the simultaneous presence of different strategies for reputation risk
management (see also the work of Unerman (2008) and the work of Michelon et al. (2016) for
further development on reputation risk management). Eweje and Wu (2010) use the
framework of Bradford and Garrett (1995), while Hogan and Lodhia (2011) ground their
framework on the previous work of Bebbington et al. (2008a), but expand the document
analysis to three reporting years and external media communications. While the vast
majority of the studies sometimes take a qualitative and sometimes take a quantitative
approach to content analysis (Vourvachis and Woodward, 2015), very few studies have
focused on how text and visual imagery have been mixed in sustainability reports to alter Sustainability
impressions of the reader. To the best of our knowledge, no one has yet used machine learning reporting after
tools to investigate which crisis management techniques do organisations choose and why.
a disaster
2.3 Impression management and sustainability reporting
Impression management can be defined as the activity through which organisations
manipulate their corporate communication to secure external endorsement and support
(Brennan et al., 2009; Brennan and Merkl-Davies, 2013; Merkl-Davies et al., 2011; Ogden and 1915
Clarke, 2005). Impression management analysis typically proceeds in two stages: examining
the motivation for impression management first, i.e. the rationale and extent to which people
are driven to control the perception of others and second, preparing an impression
management strategy, which refers to the techniques used to actually create those
impressions for others by exploiting communication channels (Leary and Kowalski, 1990).
Corporate communication and corporate reputation theories have significantly contributed to
shaping the current literature on impression management practices (Allen and Caillouet,
1994; Bromley, 1995; Giacalone and Rosenfeld, 1991; Schlenker, 1980).
Previous research has demonstrated how organisations can use various tactics to
influence the perceptions of stakeholders to protect, restore or improve their image and
reputation (Bansal and Kistruck, 2006; Bolino et al., 2008). Changing the tone of specific types
of disclosure or engaging in obfuscation is a common way of persuade and influencing a
corporation’s audience in cases of scandals, safety issues, human rights violations or
environmental disasters (Bansal and Clelland, 2004a; Brennan and Merkl-Davies, 2013; Neu
et al., 1998; Samkin and Schneider, 2010; Siddiqui and Uddin, 2016). To provide the external
illusion of candour, organisations often exploit different narrative approaches that are not
part of the traditional regulated sections in mandatory financial fillings (Hellmann et al., 2017;
Leung et al., 2015). Image restoration theory says that management presents responsive
messages that are instrumental in obtaining the firm’s goals of restoring a positive public
image by enhancing the communication of positive activities and minimising the negative
ones (Erickson et al., 2011).
Companies can use sustainability reports to engage in low-cost communication strategies
to manage stakeholders’ impressions, which is why such reports have been investigated for
their potentially dangerous role following scandals. Scholars have shown how they can be
biased or instrumentalised to build up different organisational façades (Bansal and Clelland,
2004b; Bansal and Kistruck, 2006; Cho et al., 2012; Hooghiemstra, 2000). For example, Boiral
identifies four neutralisation techniques used by mining corporations to legitimise their
operations (Boiral, 2016; Talbot and Boiral, 2015). These techniques include claiming a net
positive or neutral impact on biodiversity, denying the true extent of their impacts, distancing
themselves from the impact and downplaying their specific responsibilities.
Several studies link impression management to corporate communication theories.
Stapleton and Hargie (2011) specifically apply Benoit’s theories (particularly those of
mitigation and denial) to study impression management and accountability strategies used
by senior banking executives in the context of the 2009 UK banking enquiry. Diouf and Boiral
(2017) and Martınez-Ferrero et al. (2019) find that the motive behind positive content in
sustainability reports is to create a good impression and to obfuscate when the content is
negative. This also happens when altering the tone of the disclosure and its syntax (Arena
et al., 2015; Melloni et al., 2017), the quantity of the information provided (Vourvachis and
Woodward, 2015) and, of particular interest with this study, the use of graphical and visual
items (Abdelrehim et al., 2015; Cooper and Slack, 2015; Costa and Pesci, 2016; Davison, 2007;
2015; Davison and Warren, 2017; Jones, 2011).
We strongly agree that using visual images in corporate reporting can be an effective
form of rhetoric for impression management (Aerts and Yan, 2017; Beattie et al., 2008;
AAAJ Beattie and Jones, 1997; Bell and Davison, 2013; Brennan and Merkl-Davies, 2013; Davison,
33,8 2014, 2015; Davison and Warren, 2017; Hrasky, 2012; Jones, 2011; Patten, 1992). For
example, Birnberg and Shields (1984) find that the human memory plays a key role in
coding textual and visual information with respect to how pictures are used to alter
impressions. Images include a large amount of information that strongly influences human
visual perceptions and the cognitive aspects of the human vision system (Maire and Liarte,
2018; Sonka et al., 2014). Further, visuals are often considered as important as words for
1916 communicating or disseminating ideas, if not more so (Collette-VanDeraa and Kellner, 2007;
Maire and Liarte, 2018). However, the literature lacks scientific and unbiased evidence
about how visual imagery (i.e. pictures and photographs) are used in connection with
textual impression management to restore corporate image and distract audiences after an
accident, especially in the field of sustainability reporting.
Our study focuses on a very specific aspect of impression management in sustainability
reports: the combined use of text and visual imagery to transcend organisational
misbehaviour and restore legitimacy consistent with corporate communication theory.
Importantly, some of our methods are based on machine learning to minimise the subjectivity
associated with content analysis and qualitative research. Specifically, we use this approach
to investigate how sustainability reports have been used by Costa to move past the Concordia
disaster through influencing audience perception by placing the disaster in different multiple
and contemporary contexts and changing its attribution (Benoit, 1997; Ware and Linkugel,
1973; Coombs 2007a, b).

3. Research design
Within business and accounting studies, the most common technique used to analyse
economic, social and environmental information is content analysis (Krippendorff, 1980, 2004).
However, due to the complexity of the accident explored in this study, a broader investigation
is required. Therefore, our analysis of how Costa’s identity was reconstructed, in part through
sustainability reporting, which is called for a narrative-based approach and a close reading of
the rhetoric employed (Czarniawska, 2008). Several authors have recently stressed that the
study of accounting is evolving towards valuing narrative more (Czarniawska, 2004) and, as a
result, traditional research techniques need to be integrated in such a way as to allow for the
analysis of different types of information (Czarniawska, 2017).
This study is qualitative by nature and grounded on a multi-step approach. Due to the
complexity of accidents and scandals, this study can only be a preliminary attempt to
investigate all the aspects of a disaster that can pose a legitimacy threat. Our goal is to
determine which of those tend to drive specific disclosure strategies aligned with
corporate communication theory and impression management. Consequently, our study
is one of the first to cope with a crisis on the scale of Costa’s accident using an analytical
framework.
The first step of our analysis was to reconstruct a narrative of the events from the media,
legal documents and proceedings. We also collected and analysed the annual reports
(including the financial statements) of Carnival Corporation (the parent company) and the
sustainability reports of Costa from 2009 to 2016. Content analysis of these documents was
then reinforced by an event study. It was necessary to reconstruct the timeline of events – an
approach taken by Cho (2009), Vourvachis et al. (2016) and Blanc et al. (2019) – to connect the
importance of accounting disclosures during a crisis event, as well as investigating the
disaster’s impact to the company’s identity. These narratives were then triangulated with
Sketch Engine against legal proceedings [1], notes from the criminal trials and press releases
[2] downloaded from Italian juridical databases and LexisNexis®. Cho (2009) applied a
similar strategy to contextualise cases and comparing the contents of financial reports to
other sources of information has been validated by several studies (Vourvachis et al., 2016; Sustainability
Vourvachis and Woodward, 2015). reporting after
The second step focuses on the analysis of the narrative of events because it shows how
the causal chains of actions shaped the disclosure strategy adopted by Costa. The
a disaster
publications of sustainability reports have been linked to the Concordia disaster timeline,
which we have divided into three periods:
(1) 2010–2011: pre-disaster period. 1917
(2) 2012: disaster period.
(3) 2013–2016: post-disaster period.
Retrieving the sustainability reports was the result of deep archival research. We were able to
download sustainability reports from before the accident (2009–2011) in 2011, though today
they are not available on the company’s website. During the disaster period, the Costa
corporate website deactivated its sustainability page, and following Cho (2009), we confirmed
this fact using the Wayback Machine (Machine, 2015; Murphy et al., 2007). We downloaded
the sustainability reports from 2012 to 2015 in February 2017. These were used in our post-
disaster analysis. Table 1 summarises these details.
In comparing the periods of cover for each report, we see notable discrepancies and black-
spots with no cover, especially after the Concordia disaster. For example, the 2011 report was
published just prior to the accident in October 2012 with content relating to the previous year
calendar (provide coverage period, e.g. Jan 2011 to Nov 2011), while the 2012–2013 report was
published in late 2014, but the reporting period is from Jan 2012 to Dec 2013, leaving a gap
from Oct 2012 to Oct 2014.
In the third step, we analysed how the word and picture narratives surrounding the
disaster were used for impression management (Bell and Davison, 2013; Davison and
Warren, 2017; Meyer et al., 2013).
The first step is the foundation of our methodological approach, which was presented
above. The results of the second step are presented in the findings section, and the third step

Accident English Global reporting Auditors’

period Year version initiative (GRI) report date Notes

Pre 2009 No G3 level B 12 Nov 2010 Downloaded in 2011, then

remained unavailable during and
after the accident
Pre 2010 No G3 level B 29 Jul 2011 Downloaded in 2011, then
remained unavailable during and
after the accident
During 2011 no G3 level B 27 Oct 2012 Downloaded in 2012, then
remained unavailable during and
after the accident
Post 2012– yes G 3.1 28 Oct 2014 Downloaded in 2017, not
2013 available on the company’s
website anymore
Post 2014 yes G4 4 Sep 2015 Downloaded in 2017, not
available on the company’s
website anymore Table 1.
Post 2015 yes G4 5 Jul 2016 Downloaded in 2017, still Sustainability reports –
available on the company’s general information
website and timeline
AAAJ takes the form of a discussion in Section 5. The following sub-sections provide more detail on
33,8 our methodology.

3.1 Narrative reconstruction of the Concordia disaster

3.1.1 Disaster period. Costa is the largest Italian travel-tourist company as well as Europe’s
first cruise operator. Since 2003, Costa has been part of Carnival Corporation and plc, the
1918 largest cruise operator in the world. In 2016, Costa had the largest fleet among all European
operators, with a total of 26 cruise ships in service (and seven new units to be delivered by
2020), 2.6m passengers transported and more than 20,000 employees (Costa corporate
website, accessed in April 2017).
On the 13th January 2012, one of Costa’s largest cruise liners, the Concordia, hit an
underwater rock close to the island of Giglio near the southern shores of Tuscany. Based on a
reconstruction of the events from court and legal documents, the captain of the ship,
Mr Francesco Schettino, had decided independently and without approval decided to change
the ship’s course and cruise “half a mile from the Island of Giglio to offer a tribute to his former
captain who lived there” (Florence Court of Appeals 2016). Despite some initial confusion, the
captain disengaged the autopilot at 21:39 and took actual command of the ship so as to
execute the deviation. According to legal documents, the helmsman “did not speak nor
understand Italian and had serious difficulties in understanding English” (Italian Supreme
Court 2017). Once the captain realised how close the ship was to the island and the dangers
involved in the route, he ordered the helmsman to carry out manoeuvers but do so in such a
way as to “not disturb the comfort of the passengers” (Florence Court of Appeals 2016).
Moreover, he gave that command without knowledge of the speed of the ship, an essential fact
in light of the massive tonnage displaced by the Concordia. Just before hitting the shore, the
captain “ordered a series of different manoeuvres and commands, which were not understood
by the helmsman, although he was instructed to avoid the collision” (Florence Court of
Appeals 2016).
Despite the captain’s last-second commands, at 21:45:07, the ship hit bottom in water 60 m
deep, creating a long gash that brought about the immediate flooding of the compartments
containing the engines, generators and switchboard. Although the captain was immediately
informed of the seriousness of the situation, he decided not to warn the Port Authority, but
instead phoned the Fleet Crisis Coordinator of Costa to alert him first. After about half an
hour, the captain alerted the Port Authority to the existence of a problem, but waited until
45 min after the accident to declare a state of emergency. An entire hour elapsed before the
captain ordered the ship to be abandoned, during which time the captain did little to prepare
the crew for the imminent operation. The coup de Gr^ace came when the captain committed the
crime of abandoning the ship with passengers still on board. And, if that was not enough, it
was later revealed that a Moldovan dancer was present on the bridge on the night of the
shipwreck.
Of the 4,229 people on board, 132 lost their lives, mostly due to drowning (Dankowski et al.,
2014). It was later determined that the crash itself was not the cause of so many deaths, but
instead attributable to “the unpreparedness of the crew and the delay in communications”
and the overall management of the emergency (or lack thereof) (Italian Supreme Court 2017).
As the documentary record revealed, despite considerable regulatory and technological
progress in maritime safety in the last century, the Concordia disaster was a product of a
cruise company tacitly approving and even encouraging first officers to prioritise
performance over safety, with the captain even admitting that he considered the risk of
such a disastrous scenario highly unlikely (Schr€oder-Hinrichs et al., 2012).
3.1.2 Post-disaster period. Under the auspices of Italian Law Decree 231/2001, in April
2013, Costa agreed to a plea deal of V1m to cover its liability over the offences committed by
its employees and the multiple injuries and deaths caused by its non-compliance with both Sustainability
regulations and laws. Captain Schettino’s trials finally came to an end in May 2017, when he reporting after
was convicted by the Court of Cassation.
The Concordia remained stuck on the rocks offshore in the island of Giglio for more than
a disaster
two years. The waste, disposal and recycling of the wreck led to several changes in the
policies and regulations regarding naval scrapping both in Italy and in Europe. These are not
trivial issues in Italy: every year on average more than 20 large deep-sea ships are abandoned
inside Italian harbours. Records show that more than 150 wrecks and 31,000 boats have been 1919
sunk in the Mediterranean Sea (Italian draft law 2215/2016). The environmental damage
caused by wrecks is just one side of the coin. The social issues they pose range from wrecks
being transferred from rich to developing countries or their illegal use in trafficking
hazardous waste and immigrants (Boudier and Bensebaa, 2011; Ibrahim, 2009; Orloff and
Falk, 2003). After the disaster, the European Parliament approved Regulation 1257/2013 for
direct safe and eco-friendly naval recycling.
In 2014, the wrecked Concordia was sold for V1 to the Ship Recycling Consortium and it
once again became famous – this time for being the first and largest wreck whose dismantling
was guided by the principles of green ship recycling. For example, this was the first time the
“parbuckling” strategy was used in a naval context to remove a wreck (Concordia Recycling
Project, 2014). During the project, the Consortium was scrutinised to ensure eco-friendly
practices were employed, and six different environmental management system certifications
were sought to prevent and mitigate potential adverse environmental risks on water, noise,
air quality and sediments caused by removing the wreck. The Consortium recovered and
disposed of 46.5 tons of metal and 65.0 tons of material, 90% of which was recycled, reused as
spare parts or sold as recovered metal. In the end, the cost of dismantling the Concordia was
V1bn – double the construction cost of building the ship.
We developed a timeline that identifies the key events in this disaster and relates them to
corporate reporting. Figure 1 presents the narrative surrounding the Concordia disaster
framed from a rhetorical perspective.

3.2 The materiality of the Concordia disaster to Costa’s impression management

The Concordia disaster should be considered as more than an operational accident because it
did not just create consequences for the entire business sector, it also impacted public policy.
Costa has been criticised by environmentalists as one of the worst cruise companies with

PRE-DISASTER DISASTER PHASE POST-DISASTER

10/04/2013
July 2014
Costa Crociere’s
13/01/2012 Start of the May 2017
guilty plea for
Giglio’s Island Concordia’s Court of Cassaon’s
1 million euros
disaster wreck removal final sentence

12/11/2010
Auditors’ report
on the
Sustainability 27/10/2012 04/09/2015 05/07/2016
28/10/2014
report 2009 29/07/2011 Auditors’ report on the Auditors’ report Auditors’ report Figure 1.
Auditors’ report
GRI G3 B-level Auditors’ report Sustainability report on the on the on the Timeline of events
on the
2011 Sustainability report Sustainability Sustainability surrounding the
Sustainability GRI G3 B-level
report 2010 2012-2013 report 2014 report 2015 Concordia disaster
GRI G3 B-level Gri G3.1 Gri G4 Gri G4
AAAJ respect to environmental awareness (Friend of the Earth, 2016 website [3], accessed in March
33,8 2018), and the entire sector has been criticised as being socially irresponsible and one of the
heaviest polluting sectors in existence (Bonilla-Priego et al., 2014; De Grosbois, 2016; Font
et al., 2016).
It is therefore important to investigate if the Concordia disaster represents material issues
or not. Indeed, one of the useful features of the GRI guidelines is how it incorporates the
concept of materiality, which in turn influences the legitimacy of the organisation. As stated
1920 by Dumay et al. (2015), a legitimacy-influenced disclosure should be based on what is
important to the organisation (strategic legitimacy), balanced against the primary concerns of
its major stakeholders (institutional legitimacy). It should be noted that, according to the “Rio
Declaration on Environment and Development”, particular attention should be paid to
precautionary principles when considering any possible risk to the environment and future
generations (Schneider, 2015).
Media attention and impacts on an entire business sector should be considered material.
The Concordia was treated by the media as a high-profile disaster. The wreck attracted media
attention in the same way as the Deepwater Horizon disaster and Volkswagen’s Dieselgate. In
terms of Google’s webpage results, a search of Deepwater Horizon returned 3.77m results,
Dieselgate 2.72m and Concordia’s [4] 2.65m results. A search of Youtube returned more than
123,000 videos of the Costa Concordia, whereas Deepwater Horizon only returned 120,000
results and Dieselgate just 26,400.
After the crash, media all over the world began reporting it. The visual rhetoric of
Concordia’s wreck shaped the collective imagination through its repetition. And repetition is
a core element of impression management (Pesci et al., 2015). The so-called ’economics of
persuasion’ and symbolic manipulation confirm this to be a proven tactic for altering
perceptions (Michelon et al., 2016). In the Concordia disaster, the global imagination was
shaped by the symbolism of the wreck. Yet privileging symbolism over substance is one way
that companies manage impressions (although, we note this has not been extensively
explored in corporate reporting research) (Alvesson and Spicer, 2012). In the case of
Concordia, the wreck has been used to push a supply demand for the products beyond that
reasonably expected (confirming an idea already reported by Michelon et al., 2016). Cho et al.
(2015a) confirm that this can make room for positive outcomes for the company and society
at large.
When considering the shift in Costa’s reputation, there is an evidence of symbolic
manipulation in the media’s coverage. In line with the literature on reputation risk
management (Bebbington et al., 2008b; Cho, 2009), we checked the shift in Costa’s reputation
index among consumers as calculated by the Reputation Institute and report the results for
2011 to 2016 in Figure 2 (Reputation Institute, 2018 website [5], accessed in March 2018). The
first vertical line represents the disaster; the second indicates the wreck’s removal.
For the sake of completeness, we double-checked the impact on Costa’s reputation through
an event study [6] on its parent company Carnival Cruise Line Corp. Comparing Carnival’s
share prices with the market (S&P 500 index) and industry data (Brown and Warner, 1985;
MacKinlay, 1997), we saw a decrease of 3% in turnover and 52.9% in Costa’s operating profit
in 2016 compared to 2011 (Costa Crociere Sustainability Report, 2012–2013). Carnival saw a
total increase in share price of only 19.5%, while the S&P 500 increased by 59.0% during the
same period, and Carnival’s main competitors (Royal Caribbean Cruises and Norwegian
Cruises) saw their share prices grow by 76.7% and 70.1%, respectively.
Carnival’s share prices were strongly impacted by the Concordia disaster, seeing a drop of
almost 14% within 20 days after the date of the wreckage. Yet the drop in prices seems to
have been offset by Costa issuing sustainability disclosures, which, in some cases, saw
cumulative abnormal returns of up to 11.5%. Symbolic manipulation can explain these
effects. The results of our analysis are reported in Table 2.
 Reputation index Sustainability
80 reporting after
70 a disaster
60
50
40
30
1921
20
10
Figure 2.
0 Changes in the
2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 reputation index
of Costa
Reputation index

Carnival cruise lines cumulative returns

relative to
Market Industry (Royal,
Date Period (S&P500) Norwegian)

Costa Concordia disaster 13 Jan þ20 days 13.7% 14.2%

2012
Sustainability report 2011 28 Oct þ/ þ11.5% 2.16%
2012 10 days
Costa Sustainability report 28 Oct þ/ þ8.5% þ5.26%
2012–13 2014 10 days
Sustainability report 2014 04 Sep þ/ þ7.2% 1.4% Table 2.
2015 10 days Carnival Cruises share
Sustainability report 2015 05 Jul 2016 þ/ þ2.96% þ3.60% prices and the Costa
10 days event timeline Event

3.3 Methodological aspects of the content analysis

Qualitative content analysis is a method commonly used to analyse corporate reporting and
disclosure (Coetzee and Van Staden, 2011; Krippendorff, 1980, 2004; Schreier, 2012), including
social and environmental reporting (Vourvachis and Woodward, 2015). Following
Vourvachis and Woodward (2015) and Beattie et al. (2004), we used two different computer
software programs to analyse Costa’s sustainability reports from 2009 to 2015: Sketch Engine
for a lexicological analysis and a second machine learning tool for a visual analysis.
Sketch Engine is a text analysis tool with several functions, one of which is to extract a
vocabulary list from a corpus of documents. With the exception of the summary of the report
and the first page, the entire text of all the sustainability reports was processed as a corpus to
obtain a wordlist. From that analysis, we produced a range of statistics, such as the total word
count, the number of pages in each report, a list of the top-five most frequently used words,
and so on.
To highlight the effects of the Concordia disaster on sustainability report disclosures, our
analysis of changes in reporting was predicated on studying the differences between pre-,
during and post-disaster reporting (Coetzee and Van Staden, 2011). We searched for instances
of the terms “risk”, “damage”, “disaster”, “accident”, “Concordia”, “January”, “victim” and
“wreck”. Once a word was found, we isolated the paragraph or sentence to verify if it was in
AAAJ line with our research aim of investigating disclosures. Although counting paragraphs and
33,8 sentences is not uncommon in the literature, we applied a word count approach that considers
the number of pages and percentage of specific text averaged over the total document (Blanc
et al., 2019; Gray et al., 1995).
To gauge visual rhetoric, we used Amazon’s machine learning image classification model,
Rekognition. This helped to reduce subjective interpretations and avoid problems of manual
intra- and inter-coder reliability (Davison and Warren, 2009, 2017; Krippendorff, 1980; Maire
1922 and Liarte, 2018). All images in the reports were extracted, and graphics such as graphs,
signatures and logos were removed, leaving 331 photographs. Rekognition is part of a fully-
managed web service that uses state-of-the-art machine learning models to recognise and
classify the content of images. The program determines whether specific images are
semantically related and links their contents to various categories, such as objects
(e.g. vehicles, flowers), scenes (e.g. sunset, beach) or attributes, such as the age or gender of
people or the presence of particular emotions. The output is a level of confidence that a
specific image belongs to a specific category. For example, if the input image shows a cruise
liner, the operation might return the following labels: {Name: ship, confidence: 99.0652} and
{Name: cruise liner, confidence: 99.763}, which means the detection algorithm has identified
the ship as a cruise liner. The service allows users (us in this case) to specify a maximum
number of “labels” (categories) to recognise or to show only the highest confidence labels.
In the next section, we present our findings, starting with some lexicological background
before moving on to the textual and visual analyses.

4. Findings
4.1 General overview
Table 3 offers general statistics on the sustainability reports that were analysed.
4.1.1 Pre-disaster. Before the disaster, Costa’s reports had more pages and more images
than during the disaster period. Looking at the average words per page, in the pre-disaster
phase, there was an average number of 250–260 words per page. The results indicate that
during this period images were also used frequently. The same most frequent word list
appears in the two years before the disaster but also for the first year of the disaster period.
This is explainable because the 2011 Costa report was most likely already near to complete
when the disaster unfolded in January 2012.
4.1.2 Disaster period. The only major difference we can see in the 2011 report is a
substantial reduction in the total number of images (and the average number of images per
page). This is likely a result of Costa deciding to adopt a low visual profile because the public

Sustainability reports overview

No. of No. of Word Avg Avg Top-five most
Disaster period pages images count words/pg images/pg frequent words

Pre 2009 168 72 42,213 251.27 0.43 board

2010 174 74 45,642 262.31 0.43 fleet
During 2011 166 23 43,230 260.42 0.14 personnel
work
management
2012– 110 5 43,718 397.44 0.05 board
13 fleet
Table 3. Post 2014 122 49 36,044 295.44 0.40 respect
Sustainability reports 2015 140 108 33,075 236.25 0.77 sustainability
overview management
was already bombarded with symbols of the Concordia wreck. The absence of a specific Sustainability
report for 2012 in favour of a merged 2012–2013 report is also evident. That report does not reporting after
include any formal explanation for why Costa chose to combine the two years, which violates
the principles of timeliness according to the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI, 2013). Further,
a disaster
despite the doubled reporting period, the 2012–2013 report has the fewest pages and the least
images, but far more average words per page (adopting a smaller font size than the one from
previous reports and having less space per page devoted to images). This finding is in line
with the previous literature on increases in disclosure related to scandal or accidents (Aerts 1923
and Cormier, 2009; Blanc et al., 2019; Cho, 2009; Cho and Patten, 2007; Eweje and Wu, 2010;
Patten, 1992; She and Michelon, 2019).
In terms of word usage, starting with the 2012–2013 sustainability report, the words
respect and sustainability replaced the words personnel and work on the “most-frequent list”.
4.1.3 Post-disaster. We were intrigued by the sudden appearance of the word sustainability
in the top position of the word list, so we performed a more in-depth analysis. The concept of
sustainability was not mentioned in the 2009 report, whereas in the last report we analysed
(2015) it was repeated over and over again. We conducted a Pearson’s correlation test of the
reports before, during and after the event to confirm our observation was significant and not
subjective bias. The coefficient equalled to 0.7915 with a p-value of 0.061, which indicates
significance at the p < 0.10 level. Thus, we believe the shift in focus to sustainability after the
Concordia disaster to be purposeful.
Page counts stayed low in the next two years, although the number of images, while not
returning to pre-disaster levels, returned to levels close to what they were before (0.40 vs. 0.43)
in 2014. In the 2015 report, the number of images has again increased – this time to absolute
numbers even higher than the pre-disaster period. Lastly, it bears noting that while the
overall word count remained relatively steady from the pre-disaster through the disaster
period, the word counts for the 2014 and 2015 reports decreased in line with the conciseness
guidelines of the GRI G4. The average words per page were still relatively high in the 2014
report but, by the 2015 report, they were lower than even pre-disaster reports.

4.2 Text analysis

We began our analysis of the text by separating and extracting language relating to risk
prevention, risk management and the impacts of the Concordia disaster from the
sustainability reports. Figure 3 provides the word counts for risk- and disaster-related
disclosures by report. We included risk disclosure as a separate point of analysis to determine
whether Costa had ever before the disaster or since adopted strategies to prevent or mitigate
damaging events like the Concordia.
4.2.1 Pre-disaster. Risk disclosures in the years before the Concordia accident were very
limited. In the 2009 and 2010 reports, the levels are almost identical from one year to the next
and mainly dedicated to workplace and workforce safety compliance. Despite the accident
having already occurred, the 2011 report did not report any salient information on risk
management (probably because it was already complete when it was previously noted). A
“cut and paste” approach can clearly be seen in the assurance statement for recommended
future improvements because it was repeated word for word across all three reports.
Environmental risk disclosure is not particularly developed in the reports for these years
either. For comparison’s sake, it is worth noting that Costa’s approach is not an anomaly in
the industry; Costa’s main competitors also pay limited attention to risk disclosures, ranging
from between 0.16% and 2.26% of their total (see Table A1).
4.2.2 Disaster period. The 2011 Report contains 47 words about the accident. :
On 13 January 2012, in the waters of the island of Giglio, the collision against a rock caused the
sinking of Costa Concordia. The death toll from the accident, whose responsibilities is still being
AAAJ Risk and Concordia disaster disclosure
33,8 (word count)
8000
7000
6000
1924 5000
4000
3000
2000
1000
Figure 3. 0
Risk and Concordia
disaster disclosure in 2009 2010 2011 2012-2013 2014 2015
sustainability reports
Risk disclosure Word count Costa Concordia disaster disclosure Word count

definitively investigated (at the time of writing), is painful: 30 people died and 2 were missing (Costa
Sustainability Report 2011).
The 2012–2013 report marks a dramatic departure from the prior approach taken by Costa. It
devotes considerable attention to risk management with particular regard to several key
initiatives. First, in 2012, Costa implemented an enterprise risk management model to identify
and assess the impact and likelihood of harmful events. Second, by 2013, Costa had
established a “Maritime Risk Management” department to constantly monitor and manage
risk areas specifically related to marine operations. The department includes a dedicated
organisational unit just to assess risk. Third, Costa’s parent company, Carnival, instituted a
policy of compulsory annual risk audits for all ships in their fleet. The audit covers such
issues as passenger safety, workforce and workplace safety, safeguards against
environmental risks, water efficiency, waste management and risks across the supply chain.
Another difference between the 2011 report and the 2012–2013 document is the
considerably greater emphasis on the Concordia disaster at around 16% of the word count.
Our qualitative analysis of the disclosures revealed four main clusters of information: (1) a
general description of the accident (258 words); (2) an analytical description of the wreck
removal project (3,215 words), its economic impact (145 words) and related environmental
protection measures (2,269 words); (3) the Ministry’s investigation of the accident (337 words)
and (4) actions undertaken after the accident (951 words). A mere 25 words (0.35%) was
dedicated to the victims of the disaster. However, the wreck removal together with the
information related to the environmental impact was reported in detail. Emblematic of this
discrepancy is the emphasis given to Costa winning the “Seafarer Award” for its
management of the emergency (from an international insurance group), while on the same
page the term “victim” is mentioned only once.
Our analysis shows that, starting from the 2012–2013 report, greater emphasis was placed
on disclosing the measures put in place to prevent and manage critical events. These include
numerous changes, such as improving training programs for personnel, creating a Fleet
Operation Center to support the ships in service, monitoring the routes of all the ships in the
fleet, how emergency calls from ships should be handled, establishing a Crisis Management
Department to respond to any critical situation arising on the ships, along with an Emergency
Support Unit to assist guests and crew in the event of an individual crisis or a full-scale Sustainability
emergency. reporting after
Given it is relatively well-known that companies can disclose scandals in many
documents, we checked other literature published by Costa and Carnival, such as their annual
a disaster
reports, to see whether the Concordia disaster had been given more profile elsewhere. The
2012 Carnival’s Annual Report devotes a few lines of description to the event but mostly
focuses on the actions taken to reinforce training and procedures against risks and technical
procedures to remove the wreck. In addition, the notes to the financial statements include 1925
information about the write-off of the carrying amount of the ship, the insurance and
particularly the insurance coverage that neutralised any impact on the financial position of
the company.
4.2.3 Post-disaster. Risk disclosures in the 2014 report are largely a repeat of the same
content of the previous year, with no noticeable substantive change. In the 2015 report, the
disclosures are more concise than the previous years, but carry the same content. The
Concordia disaster receives much less attention in these two reports. The information
provided mostly concerns the removal operations. Even two years later, there had still been
no apology to the victims, but this may be because the facts of were still under legal
investigation. Similarly, information in the financial statements was devoted to risk
mitigation, ship valuations (carrying value and write-offs), litigation contingencies with
respect to Captain Schettino and related actions taken at the organisational level to prevent or
tackle future disasters.

4.3 Visual analysis

The 331 images in Costa’s sustainability reports from 2009 to 2015 were processed with
Amazon Rekognition. The front-page cover images were separated from the inner images to
emphasise the strategic and symbolic manipulation of the visual disclosures. Figure 4 shows
these images in date order.
4.3.1 Cover page analysis. Unsurprisingly, the covers prior to the accident in 2009 and 2010
depict a cruise ship ploughing the seas in beautiful and picturesque weather. During the
disaster (2011 and 2012–2013), the tone changes dramatically to institutional symbols of the
navy forces and Italian flags as metaphors of authority. According to Michelon et al. (2016,
citing Alvesson and Spicer, 2012), this pivot in symbolism is an explicit response to the public

Figure 4.
Front covers of the
Sustainability report Sustainability report Sustainability report Sustainability report Sustainability report Sustainability report Costa sustainability
2009 2010 2011 2012-2013 2014 2015 reports (2009–2015)
Pre-disaster Disaster period Post-disaster
AAAJ having been bombarded with the image of the wreck [7]. The subject depicted on the 2011
33,8 cover is also a female, highlighting the massive turn towards images of females at this point
in sustainability reports. Researchers impute the presence of a female as a strategy to restore
the reputation of Costa with women in general, as gossip and legal trials revealed the presence
of a dancer on the bridge of the Concordia during the night of the disaster. However, from the
post-disaster 2014 report onwards, majestic cruise liners once again took pride of place on
the cover.
1926 4.3.2 Visual analysis. We began the visual content analysis by identifying different
categories of objects. Notably, we separated ships from people (among other categories), so as
to examine these images relative to each and highlight any differences over the period. For
each category, Rekognition computed the number of images and the average probability that
an image depicted an object in one (or more) of the categories. Finally, we ranked the top ten
categories in terms of the number of images for each of the reporting years considered. The
ranks are presented in Table 4, while Figure 5 shows a radar chart of changing importance of
each category before, during and after the Concordia accident. Figure 5 shows the number of
instances of images corresponding to each category.
It should be noted at the outset that there were no photographs of the Concordia wreck in
any of the reports; all images of the ship showed the Concordia in its original form. Generally,
all images of cruise ships showed them in fascinating locations – against verdant landscapes,
among seascapes, against strawberry skies, etc.
People top the list every year except for 2011. Prior to the disaster, well-appointed ship
interiors dominate after the disaster outdoor landscapes account for the most, as Figure 6
shows (it shows the number of instances of images corresponding to each category).
Going more in-depth, landscapes exclude any reference to the ship portraying natural
scenarios. Noting that the 2011 report was almost certainly prepared after the accident, unlike
the text content of the 2011 report, there were substantial changes in the imagery in number
and in content. A reasonable explanation for this, although not confirmed, is that last-minute
changes to ambient photos probably do not need to be approved by the Board of auditors,
whereas text disclosures do. In addition, natural ambient remembers the same graphical
choice used in traveling agencies catalogues. The 2011 report contains far fewer images than
any other year. The number gradually increased in subsequent years, but more emphasis was
placed on people and detailed objects, such as kites, foods, birds, etc. Compared to the images
from 2009 to 2010, the lack of any cruise ships and seascapes in the 2012–2013 report is very
obvious. We assume this to be a consequence of Costa’s visual disclosure strategy and the
negative symbolism associated with the wreck.
In the post-disaster phase from 2014, images of cruise ships and the sea began to appear
again and, by 2015, numbers were higher than ever. Women featured accounting for 48% of
the people shots in 2014 and 51% in 2015. (This is women as opposed to men and children.)
Outdoor images were also reintroduced. Moreover, there was double the number of landscape
images compared to the pre-disaster period, with a particular emphasis on leisure activities
off-ship and not during travel.

5. Discussion
Regardless of whether our study has confirmed that the Concordia disaster represents a case
of severe reputational threat to an organisation (Coombs, 2015), what is still uncertain is the
impact of its impression management actions with respect to legitimacy theory, especially
given that the end result of the disaster appears to have had no impact on Costa’s long-term
financial survival. The aim of the current study was to examine how legitimacy theory, image
restoration theory and impression management acted in a concrete instance. Based on the
content analysis, we have identified different strategies Costa used in its sustainability
Top 10 categories No. images Average% Top 10 categories No. images Average
Sustainability
reporting after
Pre-disaster a disaster
2009 2010
Person 23 98.77 Person 27 97.34
Cruise ship 23 87.24 Indoors 25 56.70
Sea 23 86.13 Cruise ship 19 83.74
Indoors 22 61.77 Sea 16 88.47 1927
Cafeteria 14 77.99 Convention center 16 54.89
Convention center 13 55.98 Shop 15 66.04
Culinary 12 77.70 Landscape 11 68.77
Lighting 12 57.17 Lighting 11 60.13
Crew 12 53.42 Child 9 56.80
Landscape 11 66.65 Clothing 9 55.21
Total 165 Total 158
Disaster period
2012 2012-2013
Cruise ship 10 92.73 Person 2 99.00
Person 9 99.11 Kite 1 83.80
Sea 9 97.03 Culinary 1 80.60
Indoors 5 51.98 Bird 1 66.80
Leisure activity 4 81.50 Captain 1 95.00
Lighting 4 60.95 Art 1 57.80
Crew 3 69.13 Hat 1 54.90
Crowd 3 54.63 Crew 1 54.60
Convention center 3 52.43 Hand 1 53.60
Outdoor 2 67.05 Indoors 1 51.20
Total 52 Total 11
Post-disaster
2014 2015
Person 22 98.58 Person 42 98.82
Landscape 16 69.18 Landscape 38 66.02
Child 12 56.21 Sea 31 89.55
Sea 11 91.11 Cruise ship 28 87.40
Leisure activities 11 53.29 Indoors 23 65.04
Cruise ship 10 83.59 Leisure activities 21 55.06
Indoors 10 58.23 Plant 15 64.59
Plant 8 76.34 Convention center 10 59.95
Crew 7 61.87 Child 10 59.21 Table 4.
Culinary 7 68.33 Crew 10 58.76 Top ten image
Total 114 Total 228 categories 2009–2015

disclosures to address the different aspects of the Concordia disaster – the absence of
disclosure on human victims, the excess in disclosing environmental impact, its issues
relating to corporate disclosure and management and finances.

5.1 Human victims

After scandals or accidents, legitimacy theory predicts an increasing trend in disclosures
about the company changing its behaviour in terms of corporate reporting (Blanc et al., 2019).
Unfortunately, there is a lack of research regarding these kinds of disclosures from the
perspective of the social impact of disasters (Coetzee and van Staden, 2011; Islam and
Mathews, 2009; Vourvachis et al., 2016). In general, image restoration theory offers the most
extensive analyses – for instance, documenting the recurring use of apologies and
AAAJ Main categories

33,8 Pre-disaster Disaster period Post-disaster

Person
70
Plant 60 Cruise Ship
50
1928 40
30
Captain 20 Sea

10
0

Leisure activity Indoors

Figure 5.
Radar chart of the main
Child Crew
categories [No. of
images instances]
Landscape

Indoors vs outdoors

Pre-disaster Disaster period Post-disaster

Landscape
60
50
40
30
20
Figure 6. 10
Radar chart of indoors
0
vs. outdoors category
[No. of images
instances]
Indoors Sea

mortification (Allen and Caillouet, 1994; Arendt et al., 2017; Benoit and Drew, 1997; Elsbach,
1997; Hearit, 1994, 1995, 2001; Schlenker and Darby, 1981). Of course, in the case of the
Concordia disaster, the absence of apologies or even acknowledgment that there were victims
is what is particularly notable as a lack of integrity. In the sustainability reports during the
disaster phase, the vast majority of the text is dedicated to the technical aspects of the wreck
removal.
The lack of any type of specific apology can be seen as a new and not previously well-
explored strategy of silence in terms of image restoration theory, with perhaps the exception
of the Air France disaster (Vourvachis et al., 2016). Instead of pursuing a strategy of
diminishing or transcending the disaster (Benoit, 1995a, 2013), the approach here can be
viewed as keeping the disclosure at a minimum so as not to negatively influence the on-going
legal trial/proceedings, especially since the final determination of the captain’s responsibility
for the crash required several verdicts over a number of years. It is therefore not unreasonable
to suppose that the company wanted to avoid taking responsibility for the incident or
associating itself with human error. In that sense, Costa appears to have reacted with the Sustainability
intent of not fomenting doubts or unfavourable feelings towards it (Benoit, 2015). reporting after
Visually side, removing any reference to cruise ships from 2011 to 2012–2013 covers and
replacing them with symbols of protection – a female navy representative—and authority—
a disaster
the Italian flag – can be viewed as a signal of restoring the perception of Costa as a believer in
institutions. This sends a strong visual message to stakeholders frightened by the idea of a
company undergoing legal trials. It also can serve as a signal of the trust the company puts in
organisational authority and the priority it places on safety (events notwithstanding). This 1929
action can be seen in line with the symbolic manipulation stressed in Michelon et al. (2016) and
with the idea of visual imagery as tools that strongly influence human visual perceptions
(Davison, 2007; Davison and Warren, 2017; Maire and Liarte, 2018).

5.2 Environmental impact

According to legitimacy theory, after an accident or a scandal, especially where there are clear
environmental consequences, environmental disclosures should be expected to increase in
the year following an accident (Patten, 1992). In the case of Costa, this is not immediately
evident because of reporting discontinuities in its decision to merge the 2012 and 2013
sustainability reports, creating an anomaly in the reporting timeline. In line with the
arguments found in Vourvachis et al. (2016), Blanc et al. (2019), Cho et al. (2015b) and Cho
(2009), the 2012–2013 sustainability report saw a drop in the use of the images in favour of a
significant increase in the number of words per page. The previous work of Vourvachis et al.
(2016) has shown that this particular cautionary reaction with respect to company disclosure
also occurred in the case of the Air France disaster.
What is clear concerning the environmental aspects of the Concordia disaster is Costa’s
pursuit of an image-restoring strategy, which according to Benoit (1997) is an attempt to place
a specific situation in a more favourable context in order to transcend it. At times, Costa has
also implemented a bolstering strategy (Deegan et al., 2000), where the company discloses
more information not directly related to a specific event to divert the attention of the reader.
These approaches are evident in Costa’s actions, as seen in its sustainability reports. First,
Costa dramatically reduced the number of images in the 2011 and 2012–2013 reports to
remove distractors and put greater emphasis on the text, which in itself focused on matters
tangential to the disaster itself, i.e. the parbuckling strategy. The strategy of image reduction
and limiting the amount of information has also been explored in reputation risk management
studies (Coombs and Holladay, 1996; Coombs, 2007a, 2007b, 2015).
A second visual impression management strategy can be seen in the replacement of images
of cruise ships on the cover during the disaster period only to reintroduce them in subsequent
years. Michelon et al. (2016, citing Alvesson and Spicer, 2012) explain this as a sort of symbolic
manipulation. As demonstrated by the data on the media coverage of the disaster, public
opinion was strongly influenced by the flood of pictures of the partially sunken wreck. The
company responded by deliberately removing any visual reference to its fleet from the 2011
and 2012–2013 reports in favour of more sober images. While appropriate under the
circumstances, its choice of replacement subject matter will be discussed in more detail later.
Third, Costa replaced the expected disclosure of the disaster with a well-designed
organisational façade relating to its risk management strategy, risk policies and
organisational changes designed to prevent probable future risks. Constructing an
organisational façade after a disaster has been thoroughly explored in the works of social
and environmental accounting scholars (Bozzolan et al., 2015; Cho et al., 2015a; Michelon et al.,
2016; She and Michelon, 2019).
Finally, Costa used sustainability reports to distribute information that portrayed it in a
positive light (Aerts and Cormier, 2009; Aerts and Yan, 2017). Deflecting focus from the
AAAJ accident itself, Costa concentrated on its plans to dismantle the wreck in a sustainable way. In
33,8 the post-disaster sustainability reports, this new image of Costa as an environmental steward
is reinforced by the increased use of landscape and nature images in place of images of cruise
ships themselves. If one considers that our findings reveal increased use of the word
sustainability after the disaster, it is to be expected that pictures of nature would illustrate the
narrative. The information derived from the annual report support portrays a company that
cares for the environment.
1930 From the perspective of legitimacy-seeking behaviour, dismantling the wreck in the way
they did was an opportunity to restore Costa’s social contract with its stakeholders, as it rode
the wave of innovation in naval and maritime engineering. From an impression management
point of view, we conclude Costa’s manipulation of its narrative and visual was designed to
intentionally to distort readers’ rationality (Davison, 2015; Davison and Warren, 2017).

5.3 Corporate disclosure, management and financial impacts

Although any in-depth analysis of a financial downturn for Costa or Carnival is outside the
scope of this paper, several works in the field of legitimacy theory have used content
analysis to study the effect of specific financial disclosures in communication documents
(O’Donovan, 2002; Vourvachis and Woodward, 2015). Of course, the readers of annual
reports are different from the readers of sustainability reports, so different information is
provided to meet each of their needs (Blanc et al., 2019). Annual reports are designed to
reassure stakeholders of the financial viability of the company and that type of messaging
from Costa continued at pace during the Concordia disaster. The same cannot be said,
however, for Costa’s sustainability reports. The 2011 sustainability report only dedicated
47 words to the facts of the accident. It combined two years of reports into one, which
delayed further disclosure about the disaster by almost three years until late October 2014.
This frankly atypical behaviour could be seen as prudence on Costa’s part according to
Vourvachis et al. (2016), but it is hard to see it as candour. One might excuse the lack of
disclosure in the annual report as complying with the definition of materiality according to
International Financial Reporting Standards, but sustainability reports fall under no such
guidelines – quite the opposite in fact.
Postponing its sustainability report for the year of the disaster, shutting down the
sustainability webpage of its website, omitting full disclosure of a relevant event in the 2012
report and ultimately delaying the disclosure to the end of 2014, all violate the principles of
the GRI and the precautionary principle of the Rio Declaration. These actions can be read as
behavioural signs designed to safeguard corporate reputation (Benoit, 2015; Coombs and
Holladay, 1996; Coombs, 2007a, 2007b, 2015). Defenders of Costa might argue that the
disclosure of social and environmental information at that time was not mandatory but
voluntary, but that is hard to square with the excessive disclosures shared regarding the
dismantling of the wreck. The latter appears to be designed to occupy the attention of readers
and serve as a hedge against providing information on the victims and the environmental
impact on Giglio Island (Graafland and Smid, 2015, 2019). In a similar vein, increasing the
number of words per page in the 2012–2013 report and reducing the number of images
resulted in a biased report that reflected management’s interests, not what really occurred
(Boiral, 2016; Chasse and Boiral, 2016; Diouf and Boiral, 2017).
A corporate reputation that benefits from such strategies can hardly be said to be a
company working to regain legitimacy, whether they are actually legit or ethical is the
question. Rather, implementing risk management systems and related strategies appear to be
unequivocal signs of an organisational façade as evidenced by the “content poor” information
on disaster before the disaster. Further, this raises the question of whether a leopard will
change its spots. There is the possibility, and perhaps even the probability, that Costa will
lapse back into its disregard for risk management in future. One sign that this might be the Sustainability
case is that in 2014 and 2015 sustainability reports, the risk disclosure section diminished in reporting after
size. Regardless of the rationale for such a change, it is simply the case that risk disclosure in
sustainability reporting across the entire sector is not well developed (see Table A1).
a disaster
At the managerial level, it appears that Costa’s communication efforts were entirely
devoted to public relations. This view encouraged the use of sustainability reporting only as
an administrative duty rather than for its managerial usefulness in preventing risks and
formulating strategies to tackle such risks. 1931

6. Conclusion
In this paper, we used a new analytical framework to explain changes in corporate disclosure
using sustainability reports, and specifically how a single disaster and subsequent fallout
was framed. In the case of the Costa Concordia disaster, the company has suffered from a
short-term loss of legitimacy, as evidenced by a drop in corporate reputation, but the financial
impacts of the event did not compromise the company’s financial stability. In fact, Costa has
registered unanticipated improvements in its financial performance in the years since the
disaster, completely recovering from its legitimacy threat.
Through our study, we make contributions to three different theoretical frameworks:
legitimacy theory, image restoration theory and impression management. First, Concordia
represents a case where the company did not promptly react to a legitimacy threat but instead
froze corporate communications and sustainability reports for the ensuing year after a
disaster. This has not been well explored in literature, and in examining the Air France
disaster, Vourvachis et al. (2016) called for similar in-depth studies to articulate a new
theoretical explanation. Second, the analysis of the event over a wider timespan (as suggested
by Vourvachis et al., 2016) has opened new perspectives in the arena of image restoration.
Using sustainability reports as the object of analysis (Bozzolan et al., 2015), our findings are in
line with Bebbington et al. (2008b), confirming the possibility that during a disaster or scandal
there might be multiple motivations at work in corporate disclosure behaviour. Third, the
study contributes to the development of impression management by showing how textual
and visual images can work together in implementing a specific communication strategy,
according to the framework developed by Benoit (1997) and Coombs (2007a). In addition to
textual content analysis, we used visual content analysis with AI-driven image classification
models. Although the analysis of photos, graphics, infographics and visual content has
already been the subject of research within impression management studies (Davison and
Warren, 2017), the application of this specific technology is still under-explored and therefore
innovative.
Last but not least, our research contributes to the development of knowledge on the cruise
industry, a sector that according to several researchers is characterised by questionable
ethical, social and environmental issues (Bonilla-Priego et al., 2014; De Grosbois, 2016; Font
et al., 2016). However, we only explored one case. A more in-depth exploration of
sustainability reporting in the cruise industry (including evidence of similar cases) and
testing the practice of impression management within sustainability reports are future
avenues of research for sustainability accounting scholars. In addition, a comparison of
similar cases for reporting anomalies (like that of Air France in Vourvachis et al., 2016) can
add to our knowledge of the real-life application of these theoretical realms.
The example presented here does not allow for generalisation due to its unique context
and exploratory nature (for example, we pieced together a picture of Costa’s communication
strategy using evidence from publicly-available sustainability reports and excluded other
sources of information or media). Practitioners and analysts should treat sustainability
disclosure of companies subject to an accident or a scandal with care, and the GRI should
AAAJ consider adding specific guidance that can help companies in coping with communication
33,8 issues after a disaster.
Finally, we unearthed issues regarding the multifaceted communications response of one
corporation after a disaster and its impact in terms of duration and material judgement. But
we have only scratched the surface. For how long should a company disclose elements
regarding a disaster in its sustainability reports? These and related questions remain to be
explored in future studies.
1932
Notes
1. The legal trials examined involving the captain Mr Francesco Schettino, as well as the civil cases
against the company and other officers were settled via plea bargains. These sources include the
preliminary hearing report of Mr Francesco Schettino (dated 20/07/2013), the final verdict of the
Grosseto Court (dated 11/02/2015), the final verdict of the Florence Court of Appeals (dated 31/05/
2016) and the final ruling of the Italian Supreme Court (dated 12/05/2017).
2. We scanned 135 web news citing Costa Concordia during the period under scrutiny. The
lexicological investigation focused on Costa Concordia as a lemma, used both as a subject in
sentences as well as an object. The results of the analysis in both cases showed the presence of verbs
like “bump,” “scupper,” “sink” and “distract.” From the investigation the use of the lemma Costa
Concordia is commonly associated with the word “disaster,” confirming the historical reconstruction
of the event from a lexicological perspective.
3. The 2016 Cruise Ship Report Card can be downloaded here: https://1bps6437gg8c169i0y1drtgz-
wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/wpallimport/files/archive/Cruise_Report_2016.pdf
4. Words browsed were “Concordia” þ “accident” or “disaster” or “wreck.”
5. The database of the Reputation Institute can be accessed through the website www.
reputationinstitute.com
6. We checked abnormal returns of CCL’s shares within a time window of 20 days after the disaster as
well as 10 days before and after the publication of Costa’s sustainability reports from 2012 to 2015.
Consistent with the arguments developed in this study, this analysis protocol provides the scope to
assess whether Costa’s sustainability reports had a material effect on the market prices of the parent
company.
7. Google Earth at that time even went so far as to include the location of the wreck on the Island of
Giglio’s landscape rendering.

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Corresponding author
Laura Corazza can be contacted at: laura.corazza@unito.it
 Appendix

Holland America
Carnival corporation MSC Royal Caribbean AIDA cruises Carnival UK Line
Costa Concordia
Risk disaster Risk Risk Risk Risk Risk
% on % on % on % on % on % on % on
word total word total word total word total word total word total word total
Year count document count document count document count document count document count document count document

2009 389 1.10% n.a. Sustainability n.a. Sustainability n.a. Sustainability n.a. Sustainability n.a. Sustainability n.a. Sustainability
2010 524 1.90% reports reports reports reports reports reports
2011 433 1.30%
2012 1009 2.23% 1665 4%
2013 442 0.88% n.a. Sustainability 253 0.84% 173 8.47%
2014 877 2.26% reports 355 0.93% 32 0.16% 193 9.30%
2015 – – 183 1.08% 51 0.17% n.a. Sustainability 339 1.60%
reports
Sustainability
a disaster
reporting after

1941

sustainability report of
the cruise sector’s
pervasiveness herein
Risk disclosure
Table A1.

leaders