How CSR is visualised: The evolving role of photographs in Inditex's corporate reports

Description

It is true that a few studies have dealt with the role of photographs in communicating Corporate Social Responsibility, or CSR (Breitbarth et al., 2010; Rämö, 2011; Höllerer et al., 2013). In general, however, this remains a neglected field. Accordingly, the present paper will seek to investigate the extent to which corporations make use of images to illustrate concepts related to CSR, as well as to shed light on how such use has evolved.
To these ends, a case study was designed to analyse the use of images in the CSR or Integrated Reports issued by Inditex, the world’s biggest fashion retailer (www.inditex.com). The methodology applied was that of quantitative content analysis (QCA). This focuses on quantification to establish the frequency of visual elements in a defined corpus and is described by Rose (2001) as objective. QCA provides information that is especially valuable for diachronic studies (Bell, 2001; Grittmann & Lobinger, 2011).
In the study, QCA was used to analyse a total of 1,680 photographs featuring in the reports published by Inditex between 2002 and 2019. These images were coded and classified with respect to: (i) their size; (ii) the concept about which they provide visual information; and (iii) the various visual motifs used to communicate these concepts through images. The findings show how Inditex’s use of photographs in corporate reports has evolved through three different stages over the last two decades, with photographs playing a different role in each stage. These results can provide the basis for other, broader studies designed to establish a general pattern.

Period	26 Aug 2021 → 28 Aug 2021
Event title	ABC Regional Conference: Europe, Africa, And Middle East
Event type	Unknown
Degree of Recognition	National