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Drawing on the phenomenological concepts of “empathy” and “communal emotions” developed by Edith Stein (1917, 1922), the purpose of this paper is to discuss the co-existence both of the legitimacy and accountability perspectives in voluntarily delivered social and environmental reporting (SER), based on different “levels of empathy” towards different stakeholders.

The paper adopts an interpretive research design, drawn from Stein’s concept of empathy by using a mixed-method approach. A manual content analysis was performed on 393 cooperative banks’ (CB) social and environmental reports from 2005 to 2013 in Italy, and 14 semi-structured interviews.

The results show that CBs voluntarily disclose information in different ways to different stakeholders. According to Stein, the phenomenological concept of empathy, and its understanding within institutions, allows us to interpret these multiple perspectives within a single social and environmental report. Therefore, when the process of acquiring knowledge in the CB–stakeholder relationship is complete and mentalised (level 3, re-enactive empathy), the SER holds high informative power, consistent with the accountability perspective; on the contrary, when this process is peripheral and perceptional (level 1, basic empathy), the SER tends to provide more self-assessment information, attempting to portray the bank in a positive light, which is consistent with the legitimacy perspective.

The concept of empathy introduced in this paper can assist in interpreting the interactions between an organisation and different stakeholders within the same social and environmental report. Moreover, the approach adopted in this paper considers different stakeholders simultaneously, thus responding to previous concerns regarding the lack of focus on multiple stakeholders.

This paper aims to investigate the application of the Italian Banking Association (ABI) industry-specific reporting standard in microfinance institutions by determining whether or not a banking sector reporting standard can enhance non-financial reporting (NFR) quality and volume to meet stakeholders’ information needs in the specific setting investigated.

This paper develops an analysis of available ABI documents from 2006 to 2013 to conduct a content analysis of the quality and volume of the NFR of 98 Italian cooperative banks (CBs) during the 2008–2009 ABI implementation year. These data are analysed using two regression models to investigate the quality and volume of NFR disclosures.

The findings suggest that for CBs in the Italian banking sector, the information provided in the non-financial reports in adherence to the ABI sector reporting standard is relevant in terms of both volume and quality. However, when investigating specific categories of disclosure such as the community, the relevance of the ABI reporting standard is fairly low. The authors question the “one-size-fits-all” approach favouring a more sector-tailored approach to ensure that the NFR covers key sectoral concerns.

The high heterogeneity in the sector could negatively affect the capability of sector-specific standards to truly foster reliable, complete and extensive NFR. Therefore, NFR standard-setters, such as the International Sustainability Standards Board, should consider these heterogeneities.

Reporting standardisation should be multi-voiced and include different – even contrasting – perspectives to promote expert and non-expert engagements.

This paper focuses on hybrid organisations and shows how the theoretical approach of dialogic accountability can improve the quality of sector-specific reporting standards.