Child Labour in the Communications of Transnational Corporations: A Corpus Analysis of Nestlé Reports

This bachelor’s thesis examines corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting as a key legitimacy-building tool in corporate communication on the reputation-sensitive human rights issue of child labour. The thesis is focused on the CSR disclosure practices of Nestlé S.A. between 2004 and 2025 within the international framework of the UN Global Compact (UNGC) initiative. The aim is to determine the semantic frames and discursive strategies Nestlé uses to linguistically construct its responsibility toward children and child labour, and subsequently to demonstrate how the salience of the issue of child labour in the CSR disclosures evolves over time. The analysis draws on a corpus of 70 Communication on Progress (CoP) reports and adopts a corpus-assisted discourse analysis approach (CADS), supported by the LancsBox X software. Firstly, the study defines the characteristic features of the examined corpus, including keyword identification. Collocation analysis then identifies three recurring frames in which children are thematised: child labour, the regulation of marketing communication, and health and development. The collocation profile of child labour indicates that Nestlé primarily frames the issue as a managed supply chain risk, addressed through the Child Labour Monitoring and Remediation System (CLMRS) and multi-stakeholder collaboration. The concluding diachronic analysis tracks the growing prominence of the topic of child labour within Nestlé’s reporting frameworks and its gradual consolidation among the corporation’s most salient issues. By systematically applying a CADS approach to analyse the corporate communication of the world’s largest food and beverage company, the thesis contributes to a better understanding of the communicative function of CSR disclosure in reputation management and the legitimation of corporate conduct in an international context.