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PurposeThe 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/approachA 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.FindingsThe 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/implicationsDespite 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/valueIn 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.

This article responds to Gray's (2002) call for normative research on social and environmental accounting (SEA) and Parker's (2005) call for active engagement in the process of designing SEA systems. More specifically, our investigation focuses on the study of boundary setting for triple bottom line (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 Global Reporting Initiative; one implication being that further research into technical developments in TBL reporting could contribute to the discharge of organizational accountability.

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