The tone of business model disclosure: an impression management analysis of the integrated reports

Melloni, Gaia; Stacchezzini, Riccardo; Lai, Alessandro

doi:10.1007/s10997-015-9319-z

Cited by 128 publications

(115 citation statements)

References 57 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

103

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…For example, some firm-level characteristics strongly orient the disclosure achieved through this process (Fasan and Mio, 2016), similarly to what already demonstrated with reference to the specific IIRC content elements (e.g. Melloni et al, 2016;Stacchezzini et al, 2016). However, no previous academic studies explore the materiality process from a practical perspective, even though de Villiers et al (2014) identify materiality as a central topic for a future research agenda, and Unerman and Zappettini (2014) highlight the possibility that companies use materiality to exclude negative information and rhetorically report an image of sustainability that differs from their underlying behaviour.…”

Section: Concept Of Materiality In Corporate Reportingsupporting

confidence: 71%

What does materiality mean to integrated reporting preparers? An empirical exploration

Lai

Melloni

Stacchezzini

2017

MEDAR

Self Cite

112

109

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Purpose-This paper seeks to understand how the principle of materiality gets implemented in integrated reporting contexts.Design/methodology/approach-Drawing on an interpretation of materiality as a social construction, this research explores the meaning that practitioners attach to the principle during their implementation of it. Following an existing framework for exploring materiality in corporate reporting, this study investigates the meaning by focusing on who participates in determining integrated reporting materiality and to whom the integrated report (IR) is addressed. This analysis benefits from in-depth interviews with persons involved in the preparation of IR for a firm that pioneered this form of reporting.Findings-In IR preparers' view, the meaning of materiality corresponds with the company strategy: The IR describes strategic priorities and related actions and results. Capital providers are the primary intended addressees of the material information. Although several actors engage in IR preparation, the materiality determination process is governed by a specific "IR hub" in strict collaboration with and dependence on the CFO.Research limitations/implications-In an IR context, materiality is intimately connected to the function that preparers assign to the report.Originality/value-This novel research opens the "black box" of the process by which materiality gets defined and then practically implemented in an IR context.

show abstract

Section: Concept Of Materiality In Corporate Reportingsupporting

confidence: 71%

What does materiality mean to integrated reporting preparers? An empirical exploration

Lai

Melloni

Stacchezzini

2017

MEDAR

Self Cite

112

109

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…This results in a large amount of information and perhaps the preparers struggle to see the bigger picture when preparing the integrated report. Another reason could be that the disclosures are used as part of an impression management strategy and may therefore lack clarity (Melloni and Stacchezzini ). Another possibility is that BM disclosures may not be solely focused on value creation or interconnectivity (Bini et al.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Influence of Integrated Reporting on Business Model and Strategy Disclosures

Sukhari

Villiers

2018

Australian Accounting Review

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Business model (BM) and strategy disclosures could provide investors with relevant information. This study offers a platform for future research on BM and strategy disclosure and is the first to analyse the change in BM and strategy disclosures after the introduction of an integrated reporting (IR) requirement, to propose a framework for disclosure quality analyses, and to analyse how companies disclose the relationship between their BM and strategy. The findings show that BMs and strategy were not disclosed before the requirement to publish an integrated report in South Africa, but were disclosed thereafter. By 2014, companies used diagrams, flow charts, and informative narratives of business plans and value chains. Companies now disclose their strategic goals more transparently, but still do not link these goals to BMs, key performance indicators, risks or opportunities. The findings provide insight into disclosures that improved since the IR requirement and matters that are still not fully disclosed, which would be of interest to regulators tasked with investor protection.

show abstract

“…My approach revealed different types of insights (underlying logics, industry patterns) than other studies on business model disclosure, which have focused on the nature of the disclosure itself (e.g. Bini, Dainelli and Giunta, 2016;Melloni, Stacchezzini and Lai, 2016). This suggests that visual methods can be useful to capture the non-obvious and non-tangible ideas held by organizations about themselves.…”

Section: Viewing Diagrams: Visual Literacy As the Awareness Of Key Tementioning

confidence: 94%

“…Studies of business model disclosure suggest a 'fashion effect' in how the business model is described in annual reports (Giunta, Bambagiotti-Alberti and Verrucchi, 2013;Bini, Dainelli and Giunta, 2016;Melloni, Stacchezzini and Lai, 2016). Based on the literature, this could be explained as a firm's response to the market's expectations that accounting narratives should cover certain topics (cf.…”

Section: Self-representations As Rhetorical Devicesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Patterns of corporate visual selfrepresentation in accounting narratives

Eriksson¹

2017

Dissertation From the Swedish Research School of Management and Information Technology (MIT). Licentiate Theses

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This dissertation deals with firms' visual and pre-visual self-representations in accounting narratives.Self-representations are those descriptions about the company that firms include in accounting narratives to convey the current standings and their identity. External stakeholders increasingly expect non-numerical information about firms to be disclosed, and accounting narratives are a key medium for firms to account for their activities and maintain legitimacy as social actors. The question of which reporting conventions exist for legitimating self-representations, especially from a visual perspective, remains unexplored. The purpose of this study is therefore to explore the empirical phenomenon of self-representations in accounting narratives in relation to legitimation rhetoric.The study is based on three research papers dealing with different patterns of self-representations in accounting-related narratives, including corporate reporting and business model diagrams. The examples are viewed through the theoretical lenses of semiotics and institutional theory, particularly legitimation theory. The study combines visual methods (visual content analysis and visual taxonomy) with other methods (interviews, text analysis) to conceptualize and exemplify what is meant by self-representations in accounting narratives. The study finds that there may be multiple parallel pre-visual self-representations at play to influence representations of the self, that visual selfrepresentations are becoming more common in accounting narratives, and that several rhetorical strategies for legitimation are observable in these representations. By showing how diagrams can serve a legitimating purpose in accounting narratives, it is argued that diagrams should be considered on par with graphs and photographs as visual rhetorical devices in accounting narratives, and that they could be used as key communicative elements in the accounting process.Second, based on the longitudinal and comparative examples of self-representations, it is suggested that self-representations increasingly refer to abstract rather than concrete referents. This change is discussed in terms of the increasingly digital and service-based knowledge economy, where material referents give way to "amaterial" values. The contribution of this study is to describe selfrepresentations through several empirical examples, and to thereby increase awareness among practitioners and researchers of how visuals serve as communicative resources with legitimating functions in accounting narratives. Four concepts are proposed as tools for explaining the observed developments, and for improving visual literacy with regard to accounting narratives: inclusive perspective on accounting narratives, amateriality, self-representation, and diagrams. Keywords: visual research, self-representation, diagrams, accounting narrative, corporate reporting, public disclosure, business models, semiotics, annual report, Ericsson Sammanfattning Denna licentiatavhandling handlar om företags visu...

show abstract

The tone of business model disclosure: an impression management analysis of the integrated reports

Cited by 128 publications

References 57 publications

What does materiality mean to integrated reporting preparers? An empirical exploration

What does materiality mean to integrated reporting preparers? An empirical exploration

The Influence of Integrated Reporting on Business Model and Strategy Disclosures

Patterns of corporate visual selfrepresentation in accounting narratives

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About