The will to accountability in the Volkswagen dieselgate

Upon dieselgate eruption, Volkswagen underwent severe consequences in terms of stakeholders’ trust. Extant literature underlines media reactions to the emissions scandal, however it neglects to consider Volkswagen’s disclosure behaviour in its aftermath. This study fills this gap by investigating how Volkswagen discharged accountability in the first Letter to Shareholders (LS) issued after the fact. It relies on an accountability frame and adopts critical discourse analysis as a methodology to identify Volkswagen’s discourses around the “diesel scandal”. The findings show that Volkswagen chose the LS as a preferential document to discharge accountability through discourses of apologises, trust and hope, which convey an ongoing corporate effort to overcome the diesel scandal. Further, the analysis demonstrates that the German automaker represents the scandal by employing several expressions and different verb tenses, by evoking internal and external actors and by referring to both local and global spaces. It also highlights the use of metaphors and value assumptions to tie discourses on the diesel scandal and on future corporate initiatives together. This study contributes to extant accounting literature by offering new insights on the role of the LS as a locus for accountability. It also extends the emerging literature on the Volkswagen’s diesel scandal by focusing on its disclosure behaviour. Finally, the study produces two major implications for research and practice: it reveals the potential of critical discourse analysis to explore issues under an accountability frame and advises share/stakeholders on the potential use of the LS in the aftermath of scandals entailing sustainability disasters.