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This study seeks to collaborate with the discussions on the usefulness of the narrative approach in accounting. In this context, this study aims to elaborate small collective stories, developed from interviews, to expose the population’s perception of the social and environmental impact (positive and negative externalities) resulting from iron ore mining in the city of Congonhas-Minas Gerais (MG).

This research, using counternarratives, aims to elaborate small collective stories, developed from 52 interviews, to expose the population’s perception of externalities resulting from the exploitation of iron ore in the city of Congonhas-MG, Brazil, to give more insight for social and environmental accounting reporting. A qualitative investigation is used with a narrative approach that focuses on a specific event in the participants’ lives.

The authors sought to create a sense of collective experiences of the interviewees through narratives representative of the residents’ perception of externalities in the form of small collective stories. However, it can be observed that the local population recognizes the impact of numerous externalities. Likewise, the use of narratives allows the reader to experience another reality – a reflection on the impact of business activities in a given context. Unlike conventional corporate social reporting, models based on qualitative information can be inclusive, produced by/for the community toward action that transforms the local reality.

This study intends to contribute to the debate on reporting models that are developed by and for external stakeholders. This approach has the potential to improve participants’ both awareness and engagement, supporting transformative social action. This study makes several contributions. It contributes to the literature with a narrative approach, which is not often used in the accounting literature; it brings insights from the Latin American context, which is especially valuable given how the Anglo-American accounting literature includes few papers addressing this context; it presents the view of marginalized communities that are too often overlooked (this narrative approach offers important insights into the lived experience of people at a very granular level).

This research interrogates how the construction of narratives and accounting forecasts contributes to managing the emotional state of actors involved in reporting meetings by promoting discourses of hope in their organization's future, mitigating their anxiety. This study shows how narratives are built from multiple antenarratives and accounting forecasts, which restore and strengthen organizational actors' commitment to their organizations. This study contributes to a better understanding of the role played by narratives and accounting documents in mitigating organizational members' anxiety.

Over eight months, an interventionist research design method gave one of the authors the opportunity to record discussions held during reporting meetings in a business incubator. These recordings captured the production of narratives and forecasts in these meetings.

This study shows how the production of multiple antenarratives and accounting forecasts helps organizational actors who attend reporting meetings mitigate the anxiety triggered by disappointing performance figures and restore collective discourses full of hope for the organization's future. This case highlights how personal antenarratives and successive versions of accounting forecasts contribute to restoring a collective commitment to a failing organization.

This study refines current understanding of the under-explored links between accounting forecasts, narratives and anxiety management. The study provides insight into how accounting practices contribute to the production of narratives that successfully restore organizational members' commitment to working for a failing organization. The study also exemplifies the original insights gained from interventionist research protocols.

This paper explores the way in which industrial pollution has been expressed in the narrative accounts of nature, landscape and industry by William Gilpin in his 18th-century picturesque travel writings. A positive description of pollution is generally outdated and unacceptable in the current society. The authors contrast his “picturesque” view with the contemporary perception of industrial pollution, reflect on these early accounts of industrial impacts as representing the roots of impression management and use the analysis to inform current accounting.

The research uses an interpretive content analysis of the text to draw out themes and features of impression management. Goffman's impression management is the theoretical lens through which Gilpin's travel accounts are interpreted, considering this microhistory through a thematic research approach. The picturesque accounts are explored with reference to the context of impression management.

Gilpin's travel writings and the “Picturesque” aesthetic movement, it appears, constructed a social reality around negative industrial externalities such as air pollution and indeed around humans' impact on nature, through a lens which described pollution as adding aesthetically to the natural landscape. The lens through which the picturesque tourist viewed and expressed negative externalities involved quite literally the tourists' tricks of the trade, Claude glass, called also Gray's glass, a tinted lens to frame the view.

The paper adds to the wealth of literature in accounting and business pertaining to the ways in which companies socially construct reality through their accounts and links closely to the impression management literature in accounting. There is also a body of literature relating to the use of images and photographs in published corporate reports, which again is linked to impression management as well as to a growing literature exploring the potential for the aesthetic influence in accounting and corporate communication. Further, this paper contributes to the growing body of research into the historical roots of environmental reporting.

Children who are refugees and who live with disabilities are among the most at-risk groups for marginalization due to compounded disadvantages from the intersection of risk factors such as refugee status and disability status. Despite their high risk, there is no systematic data collected on this group and scant literature on the topic contributing to a feeling of invisibility. The purpose of this study is to better understand the experiences of Syrian refugee families with children living with disabilities.

The authors conducted a narrative inquiry into the experiences of two Syrian refugee families with children living with disabilities. Narrative inquiry is a way to understand experience as a storied phenomenon.

In attending to the families’ stories of their experiences across time, place and social contexts, two narrative threads resonated across their experiences including waiting and a struggle for agency as well as disruption and continuity.

Narrative inquiry does not produce generalizable results but, rather, gives insight into the unique experiences of individuals.

To understand the complexities of the experience of a refugee family with a child living with disabilities, attending to their lived and told stories is essential.

Prior research has drawn from entrepreneurial practice to conceptualize a variety of discreet narrative types. Research has also demonstrated that narratives are a practical and useful tool for entrepreneurs in many stages of the entrepreneurial process. This paper proposes a new narrative, shared narrative, and a conceptual model for how entrepreneurs might build such a narrative that is strategic in nature.

First, the authors review the types of narrative and introduce shared narrative as an account that narrativizes both the entrepreneur and relevant stakeholders. Then, integrating theoretical concepts from constitutive rhetoric and value co-creation, the authors introduce a conceptual framework as a three-stage process guide for entrepreneurs to build shared narratives for strategic stakeholder engagement. Leveraging the power of shared roles and salient values as the key to pre-story building process, the intended audience of the story (i.e. consumer, investor) is present from the inception of the story and integral to its success.

The authors assert that entrepreneurs need to adopt a shared narrative approach for strategic purposes. Further, the development of a shared narrative begins at the pre-story process of co-creation, focused on identifying the roles and values entrepreneurs share with their various stakeholders. Incorporating these shared roles and salient values into the entrepreneurial narrative will result in a narrative that is compelling, authentic and adaptable to different stages of the entrepreneurial process and for multiple stakeholder audiences. Post-story, this authentic narrative will result in higher levels of engagement from both the audience and the entrepreneur in the form of reciprocal action.

This paper proposes a new narrative and provides a structured process to support entrepreneurs in building shared narratives for strategic engagement with a wide range of stakeholders.

Viral videos of police violence create demands for new police narratives about using force. Public reactions to videos lead spokespeople to provide justifications that support narrative structures of the necessity and inevitability of police violence. Ultimately, video is presented as lacking context and credibility when it is viewed unaccompanied by police explanations.

This study aims to examine the impact of a firm’s financial performance on forward-looking disclosure (FLD) tone and assess whether managers are engaging in impression management or providing truthful explanations when their companies have good or poor performance.

This study used the content analysis method to measure the tone of FLD in the chairman’s statements of Omani financial institutions for the period 2014–2018. Regression analysis is then used to test the research hypotheses.

The authors found that good-performing firms are disclosing more good news, whereas poor-performing firms disclose more bad news. The results provided evidence that managers in Oman are providing truthful explanations in their narratives.

This study offered interesting policy and practical implications for policymakers, managers and stakeholders. This paper provided insights to policymakers regarding the FLD tone practices used in the chairman’s reports in Oman. Policymakers should be aware of the importance of the chairman’s reports in the eye of multiple stakeholders and, therefore, need to set guidelines on the type and quality of non-financial voluntary information that should be disclosed in such reports in the context of emerging economies. For academics, evidence has been provided by this study’s results regarding the impact of corporate performance on disclosure tone.

This study offered a novel contribution to disclosure studies by being the first to examine the performance-disclosure narrative tone relation, in the context of Oman.

This paper aims to investigate the association between negative tone in annual report narratives and future performance in the UK context. Under the principle-based approach in the UK, managers tend to bias the tone of narrative reports upward, as the reporting regime is more flexible than the rule-based approach in the USA. Consequently, any negative disclosure not mandated by regulators conveys credible information about a firm’s prospects.

This paper uses a sample of UK FTSE all-share non-financial companies from 2010 to 2019. The authors use the textual-analysis approach based on Loughran and McDonald (2011)’s wordlist (LM) to measure the negative tone in UK annual reports.

The results show a significant negative association between negative tone and future performance. Moreover, our further analyses suggest that only the negativity in the executive section of the annual disclosures correlates significantly with future performance. In summary, this study suggests that negativity does matter under the principle-based approach and can be used as an indicator of future performance.

In contrast to the literature arguing that only positivity has the power to affect a firm’s outcomes under the principle-based approach, the authors provide new empirical evidence suggesting that negativity also matters within the UK context and can be used as an indicator for future performance. Also, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to identify which section of the annual report is more informative about a firm’s future performance.

The purpose of this paper is to examine recovery through lived experience. It is part of a series that explores candid accounts of addiction and recovery to identify important components in the recovery process.

The G-CHIME model comprises six elements important to addiction recovery (growth, connectedness, hope, identity, meaning in life and empowerment). It provides a standard against which to consider addiction recovery, having been used in this series, as well as in the design of interventions that improve well-being and strengthen recovery. In this paper, a first-hand account is presented, followed by a semi-structured e-interview with the author of the account. Narrative analysis is used to explore the account and interview through the G-CHIME model.

This paper shows that addiction recovery is a remarkable process that can be effectively explained using the G-CHIME model. The significance of each component in the model is apparent from the account and e-interview presented.

Each account of recovery in this series is unique and, as yet, untold.

The study aims to determine whether a relationship exists between the potential significance of corporate controversies for stakeholders and how organisations respond to them in their annual and sustainability reports.

This paper employs content analysis on annual and sustainability reports of 48 listed companies from the Refinitiv database. The logit regression was used to estimate the model.

The study revealed that the main factors increasing the probability of a controversial issue being addressed in a corporate report are the controversy’s potential significance, companies’ financial performance and lawsuits.

Our study has three major limitations. These are a relatively small sample of companies and reports, focusing on disclosures made in corporate reports and omitting other channels of communication, for example, social media, and a certain amount of subjectivity in the process of coding information.

Former studies show that corporations face a serious risk of their hypocritical strategies becoming too evident for stakeholder groups. Our findings suggest that the risk is already materialising and may undermine the idea of CSR and sustainability reporting.

Our research focuses on high-profile adverse incidents widely reported in the media, the omission of which from corporate reports seems to constitute a particular case of organised hypocrite. It also demonstrates that companies use an impression management strategy to defuse adverse publicity and that major controversies cause minor ones to be omitted from their reports.