Journal ArticleDOI
France's new economic regulations: insights from institutional legitimacy theory
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TLDR
In this paper, a content analysis of environmental disclosure provided in annual reports, environmental reports and web sites by 26 French companies listed in the CAC 40 is performed throughout the period 2001-2011.Abstract:
Purpose – The paper seeks to adopt an institutional view of legitimacy to examine how a sample of French companies reacted to the introduction of the “New Economic Regulations” in French law in 2001 requiring that publicly listed companies disclose environmental information.Design/methodology/approach – The approach used in the paper is both quantitative and qualitative. A content analysis of environmental disclosure provided in annual reports, environmental reports and web sites by 26 French companies listed in the CAC 40 is performed throughout the period 2001-2011.Findings – The findings of this study show a significant and enduring improvement in the quality and quantity of environmental disclosure from 2001 to 2011. Even in the absence of penalties for non-compliance, the NRE law stimulated a stark and positive lasting change in the way that French companies account for their environmental information. These findings are consistent with the institutional view of legitimacy theory whereby legislation provides corporate managers with a representation of relevant audiences' perceptions about social and environmental reporting, prompting them to comply with the law to ensure organizational legitimacy.Originality/value – Social and environmental reporting studies generally adopt a strategic view of legitimacy to examine how organizations use social and environmental reporting to respond strategically to legitimacy threats. This study provides early empirical evidence about the relevance of institutional legitimacy theory in explaining environmental reporting.read more
Citations
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The iron cage revisited: Institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields (Chinese Translation)
Paul DiMaggio,Walter W. Powell +1 more
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that rational actors make their organizations increasingly similar as they try to change them, and describe three isomorphic processes-coercive, mimetic, and normative.
Corporate disclosure of environmental capital expenditures: a test of alternative theories
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examine three potential explanations for the corporate choice to disclose environmental capital spending amounts and find that the disclosure appears to be a function of the materiality of the spending and that, for the overwhelming majority of observations, the disclosed amounts are not quantitatively material.
Journal ArticleDOI
Corporate social responsibility disclosure and market value: Family versus nonfamily firms
TL;DR: This paper investigated the role of family involvement in the relationship between corporate social responsibility reporting and firm market value using a longitudinal archival data set in the French context and found that family firms report less information on their CSR duties than do non-family firms.
Journal ArticleDOI
Mandatory Non-financial Disclosure and Its Influence on CSR: An International Comparison
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examine the effects of non-financial disclosure (NFD) on corporate social responsibility (CSR) and discuss the limits of mandatory NFD in addressing regulatory trade-offs between stringency and flexibility in the field of CSR.
Journal ArticleDOI
A study of the determinants of environmental disclosure quality: evidence from French listed companies
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examined the impact of various factors on the quality of environmental disclosure, focusing on factors related to the strategy and vision of the firm (environmental audit, presence of an environmental committee), diversity of and within boards (independence of the board, gender diversity) and factors related with the environment (e.g., environmental performance, degree of pollution of the company).
References
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Book ChapterDOI
The iron cage revisited institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields
Paul DiMaggio,Walter W. Powell +1 more
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that rational actors make their organizations increasingly similar as they try to change them, and describe three isomorphic processes-coercive, mimetic, and normative.
Journal ArticleDOI
Institutionalized Organizations: Formal Structure as Myth and Ceremony
John W. Meyer,Brian Rowan +1 more
TL;DR: Many formal organizational structures arise as reflections of rationalized institutional rules as discussed by the authors, and the elaboration of such rules in modern states and societies accounts in part for the expansion and i...
Journal ArticleDOI
Managing Legitimacy: Strategic and Institutional Approaches
TL;DR: This article synthesize the large but diverse literature on organizational legitimacy, highlighting similarities and disparities among the leading strategic and institutional approaches, and identify three primary forms of legitimacy: pragmatic, based on audience self-interest; moral, based upon normative approval; and cognitive, according to comprehensibility and taken-for-grantedness.
Book
The External Control of Organizations: A Resource Dependence Perspective
TL;DR: The External Control of Organizations as discussed by the authors explores how external constraints affect organizations and provides insights for designing and managing organizations to mitigate these constraints, and it is the fact of the organization's dependence on the environment that makes the external constraint and control of organizational behavior both possible and almost inevitable.