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The purpose of this paper is to examine in greater depth the influence of internal factors on the disclosure of environmental information by companies. The influence of pro-environmental managers´ personal values on environmental disclosure quality is analyzed and the extent to which the influence of those values is mediated by the practices associated with the environmental organizational structure of the company.

The authors use a partial least squares structural equation model to analyze the relationship between the quality of the environmental information disclosed by 137 environmentally sensitive Spanish firms, their level of commitment towards the environment and the personal values of the directors in charge of those reports.

A central finding of this work is that a positive relationship between the pro-environmental managers’ personal values and environmental disclosure quality is fully mediated by the environmental organizational structures of their companies.

A better understanding of the relationship between the personal values of managers and corporate environmental reporting quality will contribute to the design of policies that can enhance firm transparency and accountability, for example, by educating future managers in sustainability values.

Light is cast on the mechanisms that can enhance corporate transparency and accountability in relation to environmental matters.

In this paper, a quantitative study of the internal driving forces of environmental disclosure is conducted, an aspect that has often been ignored in the literature on quantitative voluntary social reporting. The merit of this approach is its contribution to the literature through the analysis of the reasons why powerful actors within firms could (or could not) develop corporate social reporting practices.

The principal objective of this paper is to expand the scope of legitimacy theory (LT) through a detailed analysis of the links that exist between the legitimising strategies of firms and the characteristics of the political environment in which they are developed.

A discourse analysis was performed on the social and environmental disclosure (SED) of a multinational in the automotive sector with an established presence in Spain, in the context of the relational dynamics between the firm/society/state. Different channels of information were compared to capture both the official discourse as represented in the annual reports of the multinational and the discourse of employees and the State as represented in the media.

The results of the research show that the firm under study used SED strategically to legitimise a new production process through the manipulation of social perceptions, and that this strategy was supported implicitly and explicitly through ideological alignment with the State.

Despite a widely‐held assumption of a pluralist political context, the State is presented here as aligning itself with corporate management as opposed to the welfare concerns of employees. Thus, future research calling for regulation of SED should preface such calls with consideration of the orientation of the State.

In contrast with the dominant approach to LT that considers the relationship of the firm with its stakeholders, the present study widens the scope of LT to consider the interplay between firm legitimating strategies and state support for such strategies.

This paper aims to document and discuss the involvement of a group of Spanish academics in the process of social and environmental reporting regulation to reflect on the role of accounting academics in regulatory processes.

The paper describes the long-standing engagement of a group of Spanish scholars in social and environmental reporting regulation, with a particular focus on the transposition of the EU Directive 2014/95/EU on non-financial information to the Spanish legislation.

Despite failures and mistakes in the engagement history of those scholars with different regulatory processes, academics problematized social and environmental reporting regulation, bridged the gap between regulation and practice, and facilitated the debate about social and environmental reporting. This long-term and collective engagement generated the intellectual capital that allowed researchers to provide their perspectives when the Spanish political process was ripe to move such regulation in a progressive direction.

The paper remarks two important aspects that, according to the reported experience, are required for academics to engage in social and environmental reporting regulation: developing long-standing research projects that enable the accumulation of intellectual capital to effectively intervene in regulatory processes when the opportunity arises; and nurturing epistemic communities seeking to promote corporate accountability was fundamental to circulate ideas and foster the connection between academics and policymakers. This long-term and collective perspective is at odds with current forms of research assessment.

Academics have a responsibility to intervene in regulatory processes to increase corporate transparency.

The experience reported is unique and the authors have first-hand information. It spans through two decades and extracts some conclusions that could feed further discussions about engagement and, hopefully, encourage scholars to develop significant research projects.

The study draws upon three accounts to examine post-truth politics and its link to accounting. In studying Petrobras, a Brazilian petrochemical company embroiled in a corruption scandal, the authors draw upon a politics of falsity to understand how different depictions of similar events can emerge. The authors depict Petrobras' corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosures during the period of corruption juxtaposed against the Brazilian Federal Police investigation (the Lava Jato/Car Wash Operation) and Petrobras' response to the allegations of institutional corruption.

The data set consisted of 56 Petrobras reports including Annual Reports, Financial Statements, Sustainability Reports and Form 20-Fs from 2004 to 2017, information disclosed by the Brazilian Federal Police concerning the Lava Jato Operation and media reports concerning Petrobras and the corruption scandal. The paper employs a discourse analysis approach to depict and interpret the accounts.

Through examining the connection between ontic accounts and ontological presuppositions, the authors illustrate a post-truth logic underpinning accounting, due to the interpretive, contestable and contingent nature of accounting information. Consequently, the authors turn to the “ethics of the real” as a response, as citizen subjects must be cautious in how they approach accounting and CSR disclosures.

Rather than relying on simplistic true/false dualities, the authors argue that the “ethics of the real” provides a courageous position for citizen subjects to interrogate the organisation by recognising the role of discourse and disclosure expectations on organisations in a post-truth environment. The study also illustrates how competing, contingent accounts of the same timeframe and events can emerge.

The purpose of this paper is to explore corporate communications related to climate change in both a voluntary and mandatory setting. Adopting a critical perspective, the paper examines how companies who participated in the voluntary UK Emissions Trading Scheme (UK ETS) and the UK Government’s mandatory Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) Energy Efficiency Scheme positioned themselves within the climate change debate. In particular, the analysis draws attention to how companies, through their communicative practice, helped to constitute and reproduce the structure of the field in which they operate.

A context-sensitive discursive analysis of 99 stand-alone reports produced by companies participating in the UK ETS and CRC over a nine-year period. The analysis is informed by Thompson’s (1990) depth-hermeneutic framework, which mediates the connection between linguistic strategies and the institutional field.

The analysis suggests that companies tended to adopt particular linguistic strategies in their communications related to climate change. For example, the strategy of “rationalisation” was employed in order to emphasise the organisational “opportunities” resulting from climate change; in this sense, companies sought to exploit climate crises in order to advance a doctrine that endorsed market-based solutions. A noteworthy finding was that in the mandatory CRC period, there was a notable shift towards the employment of the strategies that Thompson (1990) refers to as “differentiation” – whereby companies attempted to displace responsibility by presenting either government or suppliers as barriers to progress.

This paper explores how disclosure on climate change evolved while organisations participate in voluntary and compulsory climate change initiatives. In this respect, the analysis is informed by the social and political context in which the disclosure was produced.

This paper aims to explore how a Malaysian palm oil company responded to the pressure for change towards sustainability in their sustainability reporting of negative incidents and in actual sustainability practices.

The study used qualitative methodology through an interpretive case study of a palm company. The study gathered primary and secondary data via semi-structured interviews with key organisational members and non-governmental organisations (NGOs), informal conversations, focus groups, document/annual report content analyses and observations. Symbolic and substantive management was used as the theoretical lens to explain the findings.

After experiencing a series of negative events regarding their social and environmental performance, the case company responded by using selective disclosure and a symbolic/legitimising strategy to address the majority of recurring negative events. In actual practice, the company changed structurally but policy-implementation gaps remain despite these changes. Strategically, the company changed in terms of its expansion policy but remained unchanged in traceability issues. The increased awareness of sustainability in the company’s culture appeared to suffer in favour of profit and cost/efficiency considerations that remain prominent. Both substantive and symbolic changes were found in both reports and practice but were more inclined to be symbolic.

The study provides guidelines for companies changing towards sustainability in both practice and reporting, in their effort to contribute to sustainable development goals.

The study provides evidence of symbolic and substantive changes as complementing activities instead of a dichotomy, which was mostly assumed in previous literature and suggests companies adopt a combination of these depending on the severity of sustainability-related issues, level of scrutiny and cost/efficiency considerations.

This paper aims to examine the extent of mandatory non-financial information disclosed by Spanish state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and barriers to and/or drivers of such disclosures.

To accomplish this task, three data sources were used. To study the extent of non-financial information disclosed and the influence exerted by some variables of such disclosures, the authors performed a content analysis of website disclosures of all Spanish SOEs identified by the General Intervention Board of the State Administration. Likewise, reports published by such companies on their web pages were also examined. To investigate the barriers to the disclosure of non-financial information by Spanish SOEs, the data were collected through interviews with key personnel.

Results showed that the disclosure of mandatory non-financial information by Spanish SOEs is lagging behind when compared to private companies. The key personnel revealed different reasons for the low level of disclosures such as the lack of an accountability awareness in Spain. The institutional size was the variable that most significantly affects the disclosure of mandatory non-financial information by Spanish SOEs.

The main contribution of this research was to examine the influence of some variables on the amount of mandatory non-financial information disclosed by Spanish SOEs. Previous studies have been focused on exploring the level of non-financial information disclosed voluntarily by these companies.

The purpose of this paper is to offer the author's view about some of the challenges Iberoamerican scholars face in order to build a successful publication record.

This is an individual review of some of the most common barriers Iberoamerican scholars encounter when trying to publish their work and examine the extent to which they are valid.

The paper presents some of the difficulties encountered by scholars located outside the main US/Anglo Saxon University environment, but introduces some principles to overcome these barriers.

This paper focuses on different strategies and tactics to overcome these barriers, including aspects like seeking research opportunities, academic crafting, co‐authorships, and targeting papers to specific journals.