Constructing ethical leadership through talk: a linguistic analysis of CEO letters to shareholders

Purpose Drawing on hundreds of CEO letters to shareholders from companies recognised for ethical practices, this paper aims to examine how ethical leadership is constructed through discourse in CEOs’ written communication. Design/methodology/approach A dataset of 369,661 words from companies listed on the World’s Most Ethical Companies Honoree List (2019–2023) was analysed using two complementary methods: Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) for thematic identification and Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC-22) for quantitative linguistic analysis, benchmarked against hubristic, non-hubristic leadership communication and the general public. Findings The analysis reveals a distinct set of linguistic signals that differentiate ethical leadership communication, including a markedly higher “we” to “I” ratio, elevated clout scores and greater prosocial and analytical language. Four macro-level themes emerge as central to how ethical leadership is constructed: resilience, sustainability, organisational strategy and collaboration and cooperation. Originality/value This paper introduces a framework for ethical leadership communication that conceptualises ethical leadership as a set of socially accomplished discursive practices that manage meaning and construct organisational reality for stakeholders. It also provides the first large-scale evidence that sustainability language is central to this discourse, offering a practical tool for analysing how ethical positioning is constructed in leader communication.