Collective identity, institutional logic and environmental management accounting change

Abstract

•Purpose: We examine how collective identity and institutional logic affect the design and use of an environmental performance measurement system. •Design/methodology/approach: We use a qualitative case study with abductive theorizing and empirical data obtained through semi-structured interviews, observation and document analysis. •Findings: The new environmental measures were reshaped by aligning them with the existing and dominant collective identity in the case organizationin other words, cost savings and profitability. Moreover, the institutional logic forced the environmental measures to remain non-strategic and non-bonus criteria in favour of traditional financial measures. •Originality/value: Thornton and Ocasio's (2008) institutional logic is applied and its potential for analysing change in environmental accounting is shown. The study illustrates how collective identity and institutional logic are important mechanisms for reshaping environmental performance measurement design and use, when the existing collective identity is reproduced. Acknowledgements: We would like to thank the editor of the journal and two reviewers for their valuable comments, which enabled us to improve this research paper. We would also like to thank the case company for its contribution to the study.

Progress: engaging with organisations in pursuit of improved sustainability accounting and performance

“… Case studies relying on semi-structured interviews plus observation plus document analysis (Abdalla and Siti-Nabiha, 2015;Biswas and O'Grady, 2016;Järvenpää and Länsiluoto, 2016;Luke et al, 2013;Sundin and Brown, 2017;Vesty et al, 2015)  Case studies based on semi-structured interviews plus analysis of internal and/or publicly available documents (Arunachalam et al, 2016;Bui and de Villiers, 2017;Dillard et al, 2010;Egan, 2014;Fallan, 2015;Ferreira, 2017;Fraser, 2012;Gunarathne et al, 2016;Hossain et al, 2017;Kotonen, 2009;Länsiluoto and Järvenpää, 2010;Lauwo et al, 2016; Luque-Vílchez and Larrinaga, 2016)  Semi-structured interviews plus observation (Bebbington et al, 2009; 2015; Yu and Rowe, 2015)  Observation plus document analysis (Johansen, 2008)  Semi-structured interviews plus a survey (Botes et al, 2014;Collison et al, 2009;Gadenne et al, 2012;Kreander et al, 2009;Williams, 2015)  Semi-structured interviews plus analysis of government statistical data (McPhail et al, 2010) Alongside the increased use of multiple data sources some authors have experimented with novel approaches to engagement research in sustainability accounting and performance. Adams and McNicholas (2007) in the 2007 special issue conducted an action research case study, an approach which has since been used by Bessire and Onnée, (2010), Chung and Windsor (2012) and Horváth et al, (2014), among others.…”

“…A number of researchers have responded to increased attention around the world on climate change as a result of greenhouse gas emissions through research on carbon accounting, auditing and reporting (see Andrew and Cortese, 2011;Bui and de Villiers, 2017;Gibassier and Schaltegger, 2015;Gunarathne and Lee, 2015;Haque et al, 2016;Kamarasisi and Gunaskarage, 2017;Kumarasiri and Jubb, 2016;Martinov-Bennie and Hoffman, 2012). Concerns regarding the impact of organisations on broader environmental issues has been addressed through research on Environmental Management Accounting (EMA) and Environmental Management Systems (EMS) (Bouten and Hoozée, 2013;Gunarathne and Lee, 2015;Horváth et al, 2014;Järvenpää and Länsiluoto, 2016;Länsiluoto and Järvenpää, 2010;Marelli, 2015) with less attention on life cycle assessment. Sustainability performance and management issues more broadly have been addressed by, for example, Gadenne et al (2012) and Länsiluoto and Järvenpää (2008) but there has been less attention on supply chain performance management (but see Lee and Wu, 2014).…”

“…[ Figure 3: to be inserted here] Laughlin's (1991) change model has been used to inform the exploration of changes produced by sustainability accounting in engagement research (Da Silva Monteiro and Aibar-Guzmán, 2010;Bouten and Hoozée, 2013;Fraser, 2012;Narayanan and Adams, 2016;Powell and Tilt, 2017;Stubbs and Higgins, 2014). Sociological neo-institutionalism has emerged as an influential theory in the last decade (Bebbington et al, 2009;Bebbington et al, 2012;Bessire and Onnée, 2010;Contrafatto, 2014;Edgley et al, 2015;Järvenpää and Länsiluoto, 2016;Momin and Parker, 2013;Moore, 2013;Wijethilake et al, 2017;Yu and Rowe, 2017;Zhao and Patten, 2016). New theories to this field include innovation adoption theory (Fallan, 2015;Robertson and Samy, 2015;Vinnari and Laine, 2013), actor network theory (Egan, 2014;Georg and Justesen, 2017;Jollands et al, 2015;Rowbottom and Locke, 2016), structuration theory (Dillard and Pullman, 2017;Jayasinghe and Thomas, 2009;Moore and McPhail, 2016), economic sociology (Ferreira, 2017;Vesty et al, 2015), impression management (Diouf and Boiral, 2017;Solomon et al, 2013) and regulatory mix theory (Kumarasiri and Jubb, 2016).…”

Employee Sensemaking on the Importance of Sustainability Reporting in Sustainability Identity Change

“…Common research topics deal with regulation, external disclosures and differing national practices (Parker, ). Only a few studies have focused on the internal organizational context, such as those by Adams and McNicholas (), Adams and Frost (), Adams and Larrinaga‐Gonzales () and Järvenpää and Länsiluoto (). However, in‐depth evidence on the real practices within organizations, such as sensemaking regarding organizational change for sustainability, is lacking.…”

“…Our study addresses this lack by focusing on the relationship between sustainability reports and an employee's sensemaking of them in order to better understand the gap between sustainability reporting and sustainability change in organizational identity. The study is based on the notion that fundamental organizational changes, such as establishing true sustainability, require changes in organizational identity (Pratt, ; Järvenpää and Länsiluoto, ). The sensemaking approach allows us to focus on the meanings assigned to sustainability reports and to analyze their relation with the change in organizational identities.…”