A multi-dimensional analysis of the Management's Discussion and Analysis narratives in Chinese and American corporate annual reports

The Management's Discussion and Analysis (MD&A) narratives in corporate annual reports (ARs) provide critical information for investors and financial analysts. This study reports results of a comparative multi-dimensional analysis of the linguistic features of MD&A narratives in the ARs produced by Chinese and American public companies on the 2015 Fortune Global 500 list. Our results show that, compared to the MD&A narratives produced by American companies, those produced by Chinese companies are more narrative, less explicit in expressing the authors’ views, and less technical, abstract and formal; they also have fewer features of on-line informational elaboration. The linguistic features of the MD&A narratives are not significantly affected by company size or profitability in the case of American companies, but they vary significantly by company size in the case of Chinese companies. Our findings contribute to a systematic understanding of the genre features of MD&A narratives in ARs of Chinese and American companies and have useful implications for Business English pedagogy in the context of China.