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This article explores how companies in multiple controversial industries report their controversial issues. For the first time, the authors use a new conceptualization of controversial industries, focused on harm and solutions, to investigate the reports of 28 companies in seven controversial industries: Agricultural Chemicals, Alcohol, Armaments, Coal, Gambling, Oil and Tobacco.

The authors thematically analyzed company reports to determine if companies in controversial industries discuss their controversial issues in their reporting, if and how they communicate the harm caused by their products or services, and what solutions they provide.

From this study data the authors introduce a new legitimacy reporting method in the controversial industries literature: the solutions companies offer for the harm caused by their products and services. The authors find three solution reporting methods: no solution, misleading solution and less-harmful solution. The authors also develop a new typology of reporting strategies used by companies in controversial industries based on how they report their key controversial issue and the harm caused by their products or services, and the solutions they offer. The authors identify seven reporting strategies: Ignore, Deny, Decoy, Dazzle, Distort, Deflect and Adapt.

Further research can test the typology and identify strategies used by companies in different institutional or regulatory settings, across different controversial industries or in larger populations.

Investors, consumers, managers, activists and other stakeholders of controversial companies can use this typology to identify the strategies that companies use to report controversial issues. They can assess if reports admit to the controversial issue and the harm caused by a company's products and services and if they provide solutions to that harm.

This paper develops a new typology of reporting strategies by companies in controversial industries and adds to the theory and discourse on social and environmental reporting (SER) as well as the literature on controversial industries.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate why environmentally-sensitive companies still face criticism despite the extensive disclosures in their annual reports. This paper explores the extent of site-specific social, environmental and ethical (SEE) reporting by mining companies operating in Ghana.

The authors conduct an interpretive content analysis of the annual/integrated reports of mining companies for the years 2009–2014 to extract site-specific SEE information relating to the companies’ mining operations in Ghana. The authors also theorise these actions using the existentialist work of Jean-Paul Sartre, in particular his work on “bad faith, nothingness and authenticity”.

The findings suggest that SEE information disclosure at site-specific level remains problematic because of bad faith and inauthenticity by mining companies attempting to placate a range of stakeholders. Bad faith represents a form of self-deception or internal denial which manifests in corporate narratives. Inauthenticity is a self-awareness that culminates in the denunciation of corporate identity and the pursuit of external expectations. The effect is the production of inauthentic corporate accounts that is constrained by the assumption made on stakeholder expectation.

The authors apply a Sartrean lens to explore site-specific SEE. Furthermore, the authors seek to expand the social accounting research domain by drawing on Sartre’s work on “bad faith” and “nothingness”. Sartre’s work to the best of the authors’ knowledge is not explored in social accounting research.

Many companies in Indonesia already have completed sustainability reporting (SR) in their corporate reporting eventhough the regulation has not required public companies to disclose Integrated Reporting (IR) in their report. Are companies with excellent sustainability reporting ready to release integrated reporting? This question is the main concern of this paper. The published guidelines by IIRC are divided into two categories: guidelines which can be assessed objectively and those that cannot be measured objectively. Content analysis is used for data collection and analysis for annual reports of the companies used as sample in this research. The result of this research showed that companies that won Indonesia Sustainability Reporting Award are ready to disclose Integrated Reporting with few modification which adds the value of their report. The implication of the study for public companies is a encouragement to publish integrated reporting and for researchers is being preliminary research for developing research about integrated report in Indonesia.

The monetary valuation of cultural heritage of a selection of 16 major public, not-for-profit Australian cultural institutions is examined over a period of almost three decades (1992–2019) to understand how they have responded to the paradoxical tensions of heritage valuation for financial reporting purposes.

Accounting for cultural heritage is an intrinsically paradoxical practice; it involves a conflict of two opposite ways of attributing value: the traditional accounting and the heritage professionals (or curatorial) approaches. In analysing the annual reports and other documentary sources through qualitative content analysis, the study explores how different actors responded to the conceptual and technical contradictions posed by the monetary valuation of “heritage assets”, the accounting phraseology of accounting standards.

Four phases emerge from the analysis undertaken of the empirical material, each characterised by a distinctive nature of the paradox, the institutional responses discerned and the outcomes. Although a persisting heterogeneity in the practice of accounting for cultural heritage is evident, responses by cultural institutions are shown to have minimised, so far, the negative impacts of monetary valuation in terms of commercialisation of deaccessioning decisions and distorted accountability.

In applying the theoretical lens of paradox theory in the context of the financial reporting of heritage, as assets, the study enhances an understanding of the challenges and responses by major public cultural institutions in a country that has led this development globally, providing insights to accounting standard setters arising from the accounting practices observed.

This study examines how accounting tools and techniques are used to create and support membership and reporting boundaries for a multi-entity sustainability scheme. It also considers whether boundary setting for this initiative helps to connect corporate activity with planetary boundaries and the SDGs.

A case study of a national agrifood sustainability scheme, analysing extensive documentary data and multi-entity sustainability reports. The concept of partial organising is used to frame the analysis.

Accounting, in the form of planning, verification, target setting, annual review and reporting, can be used to create a membership and a reporting boundary. Accounting tools and techniques support the scheme's standard-setting and monitoring elements. The study demonstrates that the scheme offers innovation in how sustainability reporting is managed. However, it does not currently provide a cumulative assessment of the effect of the sector's activity on ecological carrying capacity or connect this activity to global sustainability indicators.

Future research can build on this study's insights to further develop our understanding of multi-entity sustainability reporting and accounting's role in organising for sustainability. The authors identify several research avenues including: boundary setting in ecologically significant sectors, integrating global sustainability indicators at sectoral and organisational levels, sustainability controls in multi-entity settings and the potential of multi-entity reporting to provide substantive disclosure.

This paper provides insight into accounting's role in boundary setting for a multi-entity sustainability initiative. It adds to our understanding of the potential of a multi-entity reporting boundary to support connected measurement between corporate activity and global sustainability indicators. It builds on work on partial organising and provides insight into how accounting can support this form of organising for sustainability.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how sustainability reporting is shaped by the global influences and particular national context where businesses operate.

The paper uses both content analysis of published sustainability information and semi-structured interviews with corporate managers to explore how sustainability reporting is used to address unique social and environmental challenges in a developing country – Sri Lanka. The use of integrative social contracts theory in investigating sustainability reporting offers novel insights into understanding the drivers for sustainability reporting practices in this particular country.

The findings reveal that managers’ perceptions about usefulness of sustainability reporting, local contextual challenges and global norms influence the extent to which companies engage in sustainability reporting and the nature of sustainability information reported. In particular, Sri Lankan company managers strive to undertake sustainability projects that are beneficial not only to their companies but also to the development of the country. However, while company managers in Sri Lanka are keen to undertake sustainability reporting, they face different tensions/expectations between global expectations and local contextual factors when undertaking sustainability projects and reporting. This is also showcased in what is ultimately reported in company annual reports, where some aspects of sustainability, e.g. social, tend to focus more on addressing local concerns whereas other disclosures are on issues that may be relevant across many contexts.

Important insights for government and other regulatory authorities can be drawn from the findings of this study. By capitalising on the strong sense of moral duty felt by company managers, policymakers can involve the business sector more to mitigate the social and environmental issues prevalent in Sri Lanka. The findings can also be used by other developing countries to enable pathways to engage with the corporate sector to contribute to national development agendas through their sustainability initiatives and projects.

While the usual understanding of developing country’s company managers is that they try to follow global trends, in Sri Lanka, this research shows how managers are trying to align their responsibilities at a national level with global principles regarding sustainability reporting. Therefore, this paper highlights how both hypernorms and microsocial rules can interact to define how company managers undertake sustainability reporting in a developing country.

The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, it identifies whether sustainability reporting has become an institutionalized cultural norm in the daily routines and organizational practices of Spanish public hospitals. Second, it finds out why sustainability reporting has become (or not) an institutionalized norm in the Spanish public hospital field.

To accomplish the research aims, the authors have adopted a qualitative method approach by combining two main data sources: (1) a documentary analysis of reports published by 60 Spanish public hospitals that consistently maintained their commitment to this activity over the past 10 years; and (2) a semi-structured interview with seven hospital managers and with seven participants from professional organizations.

The authors have found that sustainability reporting has not become an institutionalized practice in the Spanish public hospital setting. Based on the notion of normativity, the findings indicate that the institutional conditions that support the emergence of a norm are not met (Bebbington et al., 2012). In particular, the lack of a coherent normative framework, the absence of congruence with previous similar practices and the lack of clarity in the norm explain why a reporting norm has not emerged. Currently, the societal context has not developed an appropriate discourse around the development of sustainability reporting in the Spanish public sector.

The contribution of this research is double: (1) From a practical level, this paper contributes to the accounting literature by analyzing the development of sustainability reporting practices in the public sector; (2) According to the notion of normativity, the novelty of this paper is to explore whether a sustainability reporting norm emerges in Spanish public hospitals.

Intellectual capital (IC) is believed to be more important resources to add the value of a company rather than physical assets. This gives rise to the increasing practice of reporting IC information in corporate annual report. Over the past fifteen years, considerable numbers of studies have employed content analysis to examine the extent and nature of IC information in several countries, but they presented different results. These results might partly contribute to different methods in counting information. In fact, the previous studies have been critised for not explicitly clarifying how information was recoded and counted which led to incomparable findings. Therefore, this paper firstly seeks to discuss an illustrative example of ‘sense-making‘ process in identifying, categorizing, and counting of IC information in annual reports of pilot sample company. Secondly, the method refined in the pilot study was applied over the final samples of six large companies in the UK from 1974 to 2008 The contribution of this paper is to primarily refine the previous method in recoding information, to send a message that transparency is crucial in content analysis and to facilitate method replication for future studies. Overall, this study demonstrates a marked increase in IC information disclosure was identified over the 35 years. The relational capital information disclosure was relatively more prominent over time, followed by human capital and structural capital.

Based on the comprehensive definition of accounting of Carnegie et al. (2021a, 2021b), this study examines how visual imagery can expand and enhance accountability to stakeholders and create room for more human-centric accounts. This study aims to understand how this use can elucidate and prompt interpretations of rhetorical features aimed at envisioning legitimacy and being perceived as accountable.

Following a methodological interpretative approach, this paper draws on a qualitative case study based on a Portuguese charity, the Santa Casa da Misericordia do Porto, from 2019 to 2021, including the COVID-19 crisis period, analysing visual rhetoric in annual and sustainability reports.

The study illuminates how the visual images interact and evoke shared cultural understandings, shaping meanings that can symbolically foster organisational legitimacy and envisions accountability. These symbolic and emotive elements capture and make visible social impacts and reflect broader societal concerns.

The study of visual images within the accounting context can enrich the understanding of accounting as a technical, social and moral practice, while expanding the scope of accountability and promoting a more human-centred approach to accounting. It also adds to the literature on the persuasiveness and rhetoric of accounting and reporting visualisations and on charities’ accountability in crisis period.