The Fall of Public Man

The emergence of sustainable development as the complex notion through which social and environmental issues must be addressed – whether at policy, personal or organisational levels – has had a growing influence in the accounting literature. In addition to explorations of what sustainability may mean for accounting and finance, we have experienced a growth in both critiques of sustainability reporting (sic) and in experiments and speculations on how accounting for sustainability might advance. This growth – as with social and environmental accounting before it – has very properly attracted critique. One convergent theme in that critique has been a challenge that much of the realist and procedural baggage associated with conventional accounting is no longer apposite when seeking to account for sustainability. What may be required, is a more nuanced understanding of what ‘sustainability’ actually is and how, if at all, it can have any empirical meaning at the level of the organisation. This essay seeks to initiate an auto-critique of accounting for sustainability via an examination of meanings and contradictions in sustainable development which, in turn, leads towards a suggestion for the development of multiple and conditional narratives that whilst no longer realist or totalising, explicitly challenge the hegemonic claims of business movements in the arena of sustainability and sustainable development.

Is accounting for sustainability actually accounting for sustainability…and how would we know? An exploration of narratives of organisations and the planet

Since the end of the 1990s, sustainability reporting has become an increasingly relevant topic in business and academia. However, literature is still limited in quantity and no major reviews of the latest developments have thus far been presented. This paper provides a review of 178 articles dating from 1999 to 2011 from journals related to business, management, and accounting. Our aim is to identify what determinants of sustainability reporting are examined in the literature and to identify (in)consistencies, gaps, and opportunities for future research. We specifically illuminate factors influencing the adoption, the extent, and the quality of reporting. Based on our findings we provide an otherwise often missing link to theory (especially legitimacy, stakeholder, signaling, and institutional theory). Finally, possible future research themes are discussed by illuminating gaps and underexposed themes in the area of regulation and governance as well as reporting quality and stakeholder perception.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID2330264_code1468472.pdf?abstractid=2290524&mirid=4

Determinants of Sustainability Reporting: A Review of Results, Trends, Theory, and Opportunities in an Expanding Field of Research

Determinants of sustainability reporting: a review of results, trends, theory, and opportunities in an expanding field of research

This paper offers a critique of sustainability reporting and, in particular, a critique of the modern disconnect between the practice of sustainability reporting and what we consider to be the urgent issue of our era: sustaining the life-supporting ecological systems on which humanity and other species depend. Tracing the history of such reporting developments, we identify and isolate the concept of the ‘triple bottom line’ (TBL) as a core and dominant idea that continues to pervade business reporting, and business engagement with sustainability. Incorporating an entity’s economic, environmental and social performance indicators into its management and reporting processes, we argue, has become synonymous with corporate sustainability; in the process, concern for ecology has become sidelined. Moreover, this process has become reinforced and institutionalised through SustainAbility’s biennial benchmarking reports, KPMG’s triennial surveys of practice, initiatives by the accountancy profession and, particularly, the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI)’s sustainability reporting guidelines. We argue that the TBL and the GRI are insufficient conditions for organizations contributing to the sustaining of the Earth’s ecology. Paradoxically, they may reinforce business-as-usual and greater levels of un-sustainability.

W(h)ither Ecology? The Triple Bottom Line, the Global Reporting Initiative, and Corporate Sustainability Reporting

The sociology of the professions has shied away from cross-national comparative work. Yet research in different professional jurisdictions emphasizes the transnational nature of professional fields. Further work is therefore needed that explores the extent to which transnational professional fields are characterized by unity or heterogeneity. To that end, this article presents the results of a qualitative interrogation of the habitus of partners in ‘Big 4’ professional service firms across, primarily, five countries (Bangladesh, Canada, France, Spain and the UK). Marked differences are observed between the partner habitus in Bangladesh and the other countries studied in terms of entrepreneurial and public service dispositions. In turn, these findings highlight the methodological relevance of habitus for both the sociology of the professions and comparative capitalism literatures: for the former, habitus aids in mapping the dynamics of transnational professional fields; for the latter, habitus can elucidate the informal norms and conventions of national business systems.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0950017015574824

Tracking habitus across a transnational professional field

Recent literature suggests that elites are increasingly fragmented and divided. Yet there is very little empirical research that maps the distinctions between different elite groups. This article explores the cultural divisions that pertain to elite factions in two distinct but proximate Strategic Action Fields. A key insight from the article is that the public sector faction studied exhibits a much broader, more aesthetic set of cultural dispositions than their private sector counterparts. This permits a number of inter-related contributions to be made to literature on both elites and field theory. First, the findings suggest that cultural capital acts as a salient source of distinction between elite factions in different Strategic Action Fields. Second, it is demonstrated how cultural capital is socially functional as certain cultural dispositions are strongly homologous with specific professional roles. Third, the article demonstrates the implications for the structure of the State when two culturally ...

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Taste matters: Cultural capital and elites in proximate Strategic Action Fields

This paper responds to Gray's (2002) call for normative research on social and environmental accounting and Parker's (2005) call for active engagement in the process of designing social and environmental accounting systems. More specifically, our investigation focuses on the study of boundary setting for TBL reporting, an issue that has been given more attention by practitioners than by researchers. The study reviews the consequences of boundary setting for the discharge of organizational accountability, from which it develops a framework to investigate TBL reporting boundaries and then reports on an empirical survey of best practice. It concludes that organizations are strategically setting and disclosing their boundaries instead of discharging their accountability and argues that such strategies have far-reaching consequences, because reporting boundaries are not only reflective of organizations but also have a constitutive role in their definition. A further consequence is that it calls into question the use of voluntary labeling, such as "in accordance" with GRI; one implication being that further research into technical developments in TBL reporting could contribute to the discharge of organizational accountability.

The Organizational and Operational Boundaries of Triple Bottom Line Reporting: A Survey

Purpose – The principal objective of this paper is to expand the scope of legitimacy theory (LT) through a detailed analysis of the links that exist between the legitimising strategies of firms and the characteristics of the political environment in which they are developed.Designs/methodology/approach – A discourse analysis was performed on the social and environmental disclosure (SED) of a multinational in the automotive sector with an established presence in Spain, in the context of the relational dynamics between the firm/society/state. Different channels of information were compared to capture both the official discourse as represented in the annual reports of the multinational and the discourse of employees and the State as represented in the media.Findings – The results of the research show that the firm under study used SED strategically to legitimise a new production process through the manipulation of social perceptions, and that this strategy was supported implicitly and explicitly through ideological alignment with the State.Research limitations/implications – Despite a widely-held assumption of a pluralist political context, the State is presented here as aligning itself with corporate management as opposed to the welfare concerns of employees. Thus, future research calling for regulation of SED should preface such calls with consideration of the orientation of the State.Originality/value – In contrast with the dominant approach to LT that considers the relationship of the firm with its stakeholders, the present study widens the scope of LT to consider the interplay between firm legitimating strategies and state support for such strategies.

Pablo Archel

Papers

Tracking habitus across a transnational professional field

Taste matters: Cultural capital and elites in proximate Strategic Action Fields

The Organizational and Operational Boundaries of Triple Bottom Line Reporting: A Survey

Social Disclosure, Legitimacy Theory and the Role of the State

divulgacion de informacion social y medioambiental: una revision de la literatura