Handbook of Business Communication

Johannes Schnitzer

10The annual report

1.Introduction

2.Clarification of the concept

3.Function and reception of annual reports

4.Structure and contents of annual reports

5.Layout and style of annual reports

6.Historical development of annual reports

7.Conclusion

1Introduction

Annual reports are corporate-communications tools. This fact allows us to deduce the two main perspectives from which they are usually discussed: (applied) linguistics and communication science, on the one hand, and business administration on the other, each including various sub-disciplines and focuses (e.g., terminology research and discourse analysis, as well as accounting and public relations). However, these are not all the disciplines interested in annual reports; ...