scholarly journals The adoption of the materiality concept in social and environmental reporting assurance: A field study approach

2015 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carla Edgley ◽  
Michael J. Jones ◽  
Jill Atkins
Author(s):  
Intan Belinda Lestari ◽  
Noradiva Hamzah ◽  
Ruhanita Maelah

This study aims to investigate how corporate social and environmental strategy can contribute to corporate social and environmental reporting (CSER) in the plantation industry in Indonesia. This study employed a case study approach by using semi–structured interviews to collect data from Indonesian plantation companies listed in the Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX) and state–owned plantation companies that included CSER in their annual report. The motivation of CSER implementation in Indonesian plantation companies was influenced by proactive and reactive strategies. The corporate social and environmental strategy of proactive principles would publish CSER due to the social discretion beyond the regulatory requirements or pressure of certain stakeholders, and prior to any negative information being received by the public. Moreover, the corporate social and environmental strategy of reactive principles would also publish CSER to meet stakeholders’ needs and demands, obtain good corporate image and reputation, and avoid negative impacts (e.g., harm, hazards, mishap, complaints, etc.). Therefore, corporate social and environmental strategy can contribute to CSER depending on whether the company has proactive or reactive principles. This research contributes to the knowledge of social accounting literature in which CSER practices can be influenced by corporate social and environmental strategy.


2018 ◽  
Vol 31 (6) ◽  
pp. 1644-1667 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Jollands ◽  
Chris Akroyd ◽  
Norio Sawabe

Purpose Organisations produce effects that go beyond the economic framing within which they operate, referred to as overflows in this paper. When an organisation comes under pressure to address these overflows they must decide how to respond. Previous research has placed social and environmental reporting as an important tool organisations mobilise in their attempts to mediate these pressures and the groups that give rise to them. However, these reports are typically only released once a year while the pressures that organisations face can arise at any time and are ongoing and constant. The purpose of this paper is to explore situated organisational practices and examine if and how management controls are mobilised in relation to the actions of pressure groups. Design/methodology/approach This paper takes a case study approach to understand how an organisation attempts to mediate the pressures from a number of overflows: carbon emissions, changing lifestyles, aspartame and obesity. To undertake this research a performative understanding of management control is utilised. This focusses the research on if and how management controls are mobilised to assist with attempts to mediate pressures. Findings Analysis of the data shows that many different management controls, beyond just reports, were mobilised during the attempts to mediate the pressure arising from the actions of groups affected by the overflows. The management controls were utilised to: identify pressures, demonstrate how the pressure had been addressed, alleviate the pressure or to dispute the legitimacy of the pressure. Originality/value This paper shows the potential for new connections to be made between the management control and social and environmental accounting literatures. It demonstrates that future research may gain much from examining the management controls mobilised within the situated practices that constitute an organisations response to the pressures it faces.


1999 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tara K. Macdonald ◽  
Mark P. Zanna ◽  
Geoffrey T. Fong ◽  
Alanna M. Martineau

2018 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 224-254 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ericka Costa ◽  
Caterina Pesci ◽  
Michele Andreaus ◽  
Emanuele Taufer

Purpose Drawing on the phenomenological concepts of “empathy” and “communal emotions” developed by Edith Stein (1917, 1922), the purpose of this paper is to discuss the co-existence both of the legitimacy and accountability perspectives in voluntarily delivered social and environmental reporting (SER), based on different “levels of empathy” towards different stakeholders. Design/methodology/approach The paper adopts an interpretive research design, drawn from Stein’s concept of empathy by using a mixed-method approach. A manual content analysis was performed on 393 cooperative banks’ (CB) social and environmental reports from 2005 to 2013 in Italy, and 14 semi-structured interviews. Findings The results show that CBs voluntarily disclose information in different ways to different stakeholders. According to Stein, the phenomenological concept of empathy, and its understanding within institutions, allows us to interpret these multiple perspectives within a single social and environmental report. Therefore, when the process of acquiring knowledge in the CB–stakeholder relationship is complete and mentalised (level 3, re-enactive empathy), the SER holds high informative power, consistent with the accountability perspective; on the contrary, when this process is peripheral and perceptional (level 1, basic empathy), the SER tends to provide more self-assessment information, attempting to portray the bank in a positive light, which is consistent with the legitimacy perspective. Originality/value The concept of empathy introduced in this paper can assist in interpreting the interactions between an organisation and different stakeholders within the same social and environmental report. Moreover, the approach adopted in this paper considers different stakeholders simultaneously, thus responding to previous concerns regarding the lack of focus on multiple stakeholders.


2014 ◽  
Vol 135 (4) ◽  
pp. 731-749 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mia Kaspersen ◽  
Thomas Riise Johansen

2016 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-90 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tiffany Cheng Han Leung ◽  
Rob Gray

Purpose This paper aims to explore the extent to which social responsibility and social and environmental reporting and disclosure have any relevance in the (so-called) controversial industries. The literature is ambivalent over the extent to which it is expected to see corporate social responsibility and social disclosure employed as active legitimation strategies. However, the apparent importance of “responsible gambling” in both the literature and in gambling industry initiatives suggests, at least a priori, that the international industry is active in some degree of legitimation. Design/methodology/approach This exploratory study examines the social and environmental disclosures of a sample of large companies in each of five countries over a three-year period using conventional content analysis. Findings The results are unexpected in that, although disclosure is dominated by employee- and director-related, other areas of social and environmental – and indeed economic – activity feature hardly at all. There is remarkably little disclosure around responsible gambling. Research limitations/implications The paper is a research note based on a range of samples across five countries and is, inevitably, tentative. The implications, albeit tentative, include the need to re-theorise corporate disclosure, especially in the controversial sectors. Originality/value The note adds to the accounting literature concerned with the controversial industries and contributes to the scarce social accounting research in the gambling sector. The authors hope that the research will be useful in guiding more focused and in-depth studies into this increasingly important and counter-intuitive area.


2019 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Floriana Fusco ◽  
Paolo Ricci

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to provide a picture of the state of the art in social and environmental accounting research applied to the public sector, highlighting different streams and the main gaps in current literature and providing input for future research.Design/methodology/approachA bibliometric method was used to analyse the characteristics, citation patterns and content of 38 papers published in international academic journals.FindingsThe findings show that the research on social and environmental reporting in the public sector is still at an early stage. Current investigations, although slowly on the increase, are still very few and localised. Most papers are about the reasons why public organisations report, what and how they report, but there are so many aspects that need to be investigated more in-depth or require extra validation in order to open new directions for future research, among which the relationship with and the differences between other non-financial type of reporting, namely ICR and IR.Research limitations/implicationsThe study shows some limitations, mainly related to the adoption of the bibliometric method. Indeed, it does not take into account books and chapters but only papers published in international and academic journals. This leads to exclude a significant part of the existing literature and other relevant contributions on the field.Originality/valueSocial and environmental reporting practices are quickly spreading in the public sector. The field is particularly interesting, given the specific connotations of this kind of organisations. However, the literature is clearly not exhaustive and there is not a comprehensive and systematic review of the state of the art on the subject.


2020 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Afzalur Rashid

Purpose This study aims to examine the influence of institutional shareholding on a firm’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices in Bangladesh. Design/methodology/approach This study uses a content analysis to capture a firm’s CSR practices, based on various attributes of social and environmental reporting made by the firm. Based on these attributes, a corporate social responsibility reporting index (CSRI) is constructed. To examine the causal relationship between institutional shareholding and firm CSR practices, this study uses a simultaneous equations approach to control the endogeneity problem. Findings The finding of this study is that both CSR reporting and institutional shareholding negatively influence each other. Research limitations/implications This study is subject to some limitations such as the subjectivity or judgement associated in the coding process. Practical implications If the institutional investors are not concerned with its environmental and societal issues, there will be a sustainability issue for the business because companies will continue ignoring the employee health and hygiene, education, training and welfare. Their ignorance of these societal issues will lead to compromising the quality of living for important stakeholders within the society. Originality/value This study contributes the literature on CSR reporting.


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