From Sustainability to Integrated Reporting: The Legitimizing Role of the CSR Manager

Abstract

This article aims to explore how an individual actor, embodying the role of the institutional entrepreneur, legitimizes new corporate reporting practices. This study is based on a longitudinal and explanatory case study of an Italian listed public utility, operating in the electricity sector, which has recently implemented Integrated Reporting. Findings were analysed through the lens of institutional entrepreneurship, revealing that Integrated Reporting can be implemented through the legitimizing activities carried out by the corporate social responsibility manager. This organizational professional, with strong competences and intrinsic engagement, efficiently uses available resources and gains support from various organizational groups through intense networking. A substantial change in corporate reporting practices can influence the position of the institutional entrepreneur who originally triggered the change process. The institutional entrepreneur first moves from the periphery to the centre of the organization and then shares such central role with other organizational professionals once the change has been implemented.

How expected outcomes, stakeholders, and institutions influence corporate social responsibility at different levels of large basic needs firms

“…The fact that all management levels were consistent in their answers indicates that we avoided any source of bias. However, this result contrasts the literature on decoupling (Argento et al, ; Carrington et al, ; Crilly et al, ). We recommend that future research aims to better understand how and when the behavior of individual managers is coupled to firm policy and on what aspects (attributes) of CSR activities individual managers might depart.…”

“…The fact that all management levels were consistent in their answers indicates that we avoided any source of bias. However, this result contrasts the literature on decoupling (Argento et al, 2018;Carrington et al, 2018;Crilly et al, 2012).…”

“…At the firm level, executives formulate corporate CSR policy, whereas CSR activities are executed at the level of individual (middle-level) managers. In addition, managers can act as social intrapreneurs through their own initiatives (Carrington, Zwick, & Neville, 2018) and can even affect (CSR) policies at the firm level by strategic maneuvering (Argento, Culasso, & Truant, 2018;Rouleau & Balogun, 2011), diligence (Powell, 2017), and efforts to institutionalize and routinize CSR (Risi & Wickert, 2017). This means that both levels interact (Radaelli & Sitton-Kent, 2016).…”

Disclosing Strategies and Business Models in the Integrated Report

“…The preparation of an IR assumes that strategic information concerning the organisation should first be internally discussed and then disclosed to external stakeholders (Argento et al, 2019). The process of internally discussing and then disclosing relevant information is very delicate, considering that an IR should communicate the organisation's strategy and BM, measuring the BM's key success factors, that is, how an organisation proposes, creates, delivers and captures value not only in the short term but also, and especially, over the long term (Salvioni & Bosetti, 2014;Stubbs & Higgings, 2014).…”

“…Although research on integrated reporting has proliferated in the academic literature (Argento et al, 2019;De Villiers et al, 2016;De Villiers et al, 2017;Dumay et al, 2016;Stubbs & Higgings, 2014), gaps remain to be filled. De Villiers et al (2014) argued that the processes of integrating different types of information to produce the IR are not well understood.…”