One Rule to Rule Them All? Organisational Sensemaking of Corporate Responsibility

Onkila, Tiina; Siltaoja, Marjo

doi:10.1007/s10551-015-2763-5

Cited by 14 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 82 publications

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“…They eventually transformed their reporting practices in an attempt to move towards this goal -although they did not fully close the gap between their reporting aspiration and their reporting practices. A potential explanation for this partial incarnation of the myth resides in Onkila and Siltaoja (2017). They argue that the push towards better practices (present in the discrepancy between talk and action) might be insufficient to trigger change if the applicability of the proposed practices is deficient in the adopting organization.…”

Section: Reflecting On Integrated Reportingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“Integrated reporting is like God: no one has met Him, but everybody talks about Him”

Gibassier

Rodrigue²,

Arjaliès³

2018

AAAJ

116

122

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Purpose The purpose of this paper is to analyze the process through which an International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC) pilot company adopted “integrated reporting” (IR), a management innovation that merges financial and non-financial reporting. Design/methodology/approach A seven-year longitudinal ethnographic study based on semi-structured interviews, observations, and documentary evidence is used to analyze this multinational company’s IR adoption process from its decision to become an IIRC pilot organization to the publication of its first integrated report. Findings Findings demonstrate that the company envisioned IR as a “rational myth” (Hatchuel, 1998; Hatchuel and Weil, 1992). This conceptualization acted as a springboard for IR adoption, with the mythical dimension residing in the promise that IR had the potential to portray global performance in light of the company’s own foundational myth. The company challenged the vision of IR suggested by the IIRC to stay true to its conceptualization of IR and eventually chose to implement its own version of an integrated report. Originality/value The study enriches previous research on IR and management innovations by showing how important it is for organizations to acknowledge the mythical dimension of the management innovations they pursue to support their adoption processes. These findings, suggest that myths can play a productive role in transforming business (reporting) practices. Some transition conditions that make this transformation possible are identified and the implications of these results for the future of IR, sustainability, and accounting more broadly are discussed.

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Section: Reflecting On Integrated Reportingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“Integrated reporting is like God: no one has met Him, but everybody talks about Him”

Gibassier

Rodrigue²,

Arjaliès³

2018

AAAJ

116

122

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“…This body of literature regards change agents as key interpreters in a search process of how organizations configure sustainability in relation to their organizational context (Metcalf and Benn, 2013;Rauter et al, 2017). These intraorganizational studies acknowledge that change agents gradually translate general information on sustainability into diverse organizational settings, practices and routines (Aguilera et al, 2007;Cramer et al, 2006;Haack et al, 2012;Onkila and Siltaoja, 2015).…”

Section: Change Agents and Sustainable Supply Chain Collaborationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Change agents and sustainable supply chain collaboration: A longitudinal study in the Dutch pig farming sector from a sensemaking perspective

Heijden

Cramer

2017

Journal of Cleaner Production

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“…But what would change the situation? We point to work on organisational sensemaking (Weick, 1995;Basu and Palazzo, 2008;Hahn et al, 2014;Onkila and Siltaoja, 2017;Onkila et al, 2018) to explain how organisations can render new business notions, such as sustainability, meaningful to organisational members and lead to relevant corporate communication.…”

Section: Antecedents Of the Decision To Communicate Sustainabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While much scholarly attention has been devoted to the why of sustainability communication, we still have little understanding of the how; that is, what actually happens inside an organisation initiating the process of external communication, and what processes unfold after that decision (Contrafatto, 2014). A sensemaking approach (Weick, 1995;Basu and Palazzo, 2008;Hahn et al, 2014;Onkila and Siltaoja, 2017) may prove useful in exploring these processes. Sensemaking can be approached as the reflexive micro-processes of meaning construction, by which individuals, in their use of language or narrative, aim to comprehend the (organisational) reality they inhabit (Perey, 2015;Rouleau, 2005;Dawson and McLean, 2013).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Triggering sustainability communication in a B2B context: combining action research and sensemaking

Apostol

Mäkelä

Heikkilä

et al. 2021

AAAJ

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PurposeThe paper explores processes associated with the adoption of corporate sustainability communication in a B2B context. It employs a combined action research and sensemaking approach to document moments that precede the initiation of external sustainability communication.Design/methodology/approachThe paper is the outcome of an action research project, where we examine the case of one industrial company that was silent on its multiple sustainability-related practices, but recently decided to become more transparent to the outside world. A processual approach to sensemaking is adopted to show how organisational and non-organisational members actively participated in meaning co-construction.FindingsCorporate silence can be disrupted by triggering events that cause moments of sudden realisation for organisational members, eventually leading to the initiation of sensemaking processes inside the organisation. Once this occurs, the possibility of externally communicating sustainability appears a feasible and strategic approach to pursue. We document how different actors are involved in meaning co-construction and how the entire process of sensemaking unfolds.Practical implicationsA sensemaking approach sheds light on the complexity of sustainability communication, where multiple actors are involved. This is a useful approach to consider in order to couple sustainability with other organisational practices. Moreover, sensemaking opens a window of opportunity for various societal actors' interventions to shape the role and content of sustainability communication.Originality/valueThe paper offers an original, theoretically informed methodological contribution to the literature on sustainability communication by coupling a sensemaking approach with action research. The approach is employed to examine the role of internal organisational actors in sustainability reporting processes, an area that has received scant attention.

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One Rule to Rule Them All? Organisational Sensemaking of Corporate Responsibility

Cited by 14 publications

References 82 publications

“Integrated reporting is like God: no one has met Him, but everybody talks about Him”

“Integrated reporting is like God: no one has met Him, but everybody talks about Him”

Change agents and sustainable supply chain collaboration: A longitudinal study in the Dutch pig farming sector from a sensemaking perspective

Triggering sustainability communication in a B2B context: combining action research and sensemaking

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