Sustainability reporting and impression management: A case study in the oil and gas industry
Vol. 20, No. 2/2021 , pp264..289
Author(s):
Maria-Silvia Săndulescu
Keywords:
impression management, non-financial performance, legitimacy, corporate narratives
Abstract:
Research Question: How are corporate narratives used to build and restore corporate legitimacy?
Motivation: Under certain circumstances, managers may be motivated to control stakeholders’ perception regarding organizational performance. As such, this study makes use of sustainability disclosures that were issued both prior and after a major incident in order to analyse the use of corporate narratives.
Idea: The paper relies on the case of KazMunayGas International, with a view of analysing the evolution of the messages used in framing occupational safety issues.
Data: The sustainability reports and corporate press releases issued by KMGI for the period 2015 and 2016 were explored.
Tools: A manual content analysis was performed in order to evaluate the use of evaluations, repetitions and performance comparisons.
Findings: A trend towards the use of positive evaluations of organizational performance was observed. Following the negative event, the use of several impression management strategies was documented. This reflected a general tendency to defend corporate legitimacy by favourably shaping the corporate image associated with occupational safety.
Contribution: The paper aims to complement previous research on social and environmental disclosures that analysed the biased use of tone and graph distortions. In addition, the paper contributes to a literature that focused mainly on environmental disclosures by drawing on a case study that reveals occupational safety issues.
Download:
http://online-cig.ase.ro/jcig/art/20_2_4.pdf
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