The Portrayal of Accounting Firms : A Visual Analysis of Images in Annual Reports

Abstract: Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of accounting firms’ visual portrayal.  Theoretical perspectives: Institutional theory, stereotype theory, legitimacy theory, stakeholder theory, and framing theory have, together with earlier literature, been applied to the empirical findings to fulfill the purpose of this thesis.  Methodology: Images in the annual reports of the Big 4 accounting firms in Sweden have been analyzed over a ten-year period. In total, 654 images have been coded and analyzed based on seven concepts. The first three concepts, namely gender, ethnicity, and age, are based on a visual content analysis. For the remaining concepts: professionalism, environmental sustainability, technology, and well-being, inspiration has been drawn from a visual grading analysis. In addition, secondary data concerning various events on a firm, institutional, and macro level that are related to the concepts of this thesis have, in essence, been collected from online news articles and annual reports of the Big 4 accounting firms in Sweden.  Findings: The findings show that the portrayal of professionalism is rather high but that a downward trend can be observed for most accounting firms. Instead, more room is given to the portrayal of other aspects which mainly revolves around environmental sustainability and well-being. The portrayal of ethnicity and young people show an upward trend for most accounting firms whereas there is a rather high portrayal of women in most years. Furthermore, the portrayal in accounting firms’ annual reports seem to be somewhat related to internal as well as external events.