Same Pressure, Different Communication: A Comparative Content Analysis of Incumbent and Pure-Player Automotive Firms

Organizations in the automotive industry face considerable pressure to undergo a sustainable transformation and decarbonization. However, this transformation extends beyond technological change and requires organizational adaptation, creating new risks and constraints. While previous research has primarily focused on identifying transformation risks and drivers, empirical evidence on how different types of manufacturers communicate these issues remains limited. This study compares how traditional manufacturers and pure players communicate transformation risks and drivers. Content analysis and statistical hypothesis testing were conducted in the R environment on reports from the 14 largest automotive manufacturers, according to the Fortune 500, covering 2022–2025. While cross-sectional baseline comparisons indicate that incumbents exhibit risk-related communication more frequently, supplementary longitudinal panel models show that this difference is non-significant when controlling for firm-level clustering and time effects. However, nonparametric tests showed significant differences in the communication of social, technological, and governance risks, as well as differences in customer, leadership, governance, and competition drivers. These findings suggest that while overall differences require cautious interpretation, firms exposed to similar transformation pressures exhibit selective differences in their communication of transformation risks and drivers based on their starting positions. The study contributes empirical evidence that organizational responses to industry-wide sustainable transformation are not homogeneous.