Making sustainability meaningful: aspirations, discourses and reporting practices

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the enabling role of accounting and reporting practices as discourses about sustainability unfold inside organizations. In particular, the authors investigate how managers attempt to connect the concept of “sustainability” to their specific experience, as they seek to make sustainability meaningful (i.e. filling it with unfolding meaning) through accounting and within particular discursive spaces. Design/methodology/approach The authors rely upon the case of LOGIC, a large international oil and gas company operating in more than 70 countries worldwide. The authors analyze the evolution of discourses concerning sustainability inside the company, as well as the changing accounting and reporting practices, with a particular focus on integrated reporting. Findings The authors show that accounting and reporting practices (such as integrated reporting within LOGIC) provide the conditions for “sustainability”—as a discursive concept—to become meaningful, while evolving themselves as they are attached to this concept. They do so by enabling individuals (the management team within LOGIC) to connect their diverse experiences and aspirations to the concept of sustainability. Rather than filling sustainability with stable meaning, the authors observed that individuals are attracted by the gaps left by accounting representations, leading to the development of new practices and unfolding meanings within specific discursive spaces. Originality/value Most of the literature on sustainability accounting and reporting practices concentrate on the need for these practices to mirror what companies do about sustainability. Differently, the authors add to the very few studies on “aspirational” reporting that have emphasized the enabling effects of the gap between what companies say and do about sustainability. The authors do so by demonstrating that accounting is “aspirational” not only because it stimulates corporate efforts toward an imaginary better future, but also because it attracts managers’ particular aspirations through its representational gap. The authors show that this gap enables meaningful connections between individuals (their particular experience and aspirations) and “sustainability,” bringing this concept into their specific discursive space and, thereby, leading to the emergence of new practices.

Sustainability Disclosure in Integrated Reporting: Does It Matter to Investors? A Cheap Talk Approach

“…The success of integrated reporting was mostly driven by its focus on sustainability disclosure, having the latter been a topic of growing interest in corporate reporting [17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25]. More generally, non-financial communication obtained a considerable attention during the last 20 years, especially in relation to sustainability and corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure.…”

“…In order to avoid common estimation problems, all data are considered in Euro, which serves as common base currency. In addition, for each company both sides of Equation (25) are pre-multiplied times the number of common shares outstanding (n i,t ).…”

“…In this way, a constant term (β 0 ) is in introduced in the regression in order to allow for E( (B) i,t n i,t ) = 0. The inclusion of a common intercept term in the regression would be prevented by "scaling" effects if not multiplying both sides of Equation (25) times the number of shares outstanding. Indeed, consider two companies, A and B, differing only for the number of their outstanding shares.…”

“…. Substituting Equation (30) in Equation (25), this study's regression model is ultimately formulated as (31) where β 1 πρ. Estimates for this model's parameters are obtained through the application of the Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) estimator, as the error term (u i,t ) satisfies the exogeneity condition i,t , which is included in u i,t , was shown to be linear in eps (1) i,t n i,t .…”

Sustainability performance in businesses and its implications for the sustainability service industry

“…Organizational development to more sustainable engagement Busco et al (2018), Fernández and Camacho (2016), Passetti et al (2018), Rego et al (2017), Witjes et al (2017), Zollo et al (2013) 1.5%…”