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  1. Assessing and Improving the Quality of Sustainability Reports: The Auditors’ Perspective.Olivier Boiral, Iñaki Heras-Saizarbitoria & Marie-Christine Brotherton - 2019 - Journal of Business Ethics 155 (3):703-721.
    This article presents, an analysis of the opinions of assurance providers regarding the quality and the limitations of sustainability reports and their recommendations to improve them using the Global Reporting Initiative as a framework. The qualitative content analysis of 301 assurance statements for sustainability reports from mining and energy companies provides a comprehensive view of the main outcomes of the assurance process, including its limitations, the application of the GRI principles and suggestions for improving sustainability reports. Taking into account the (...)
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  • Role of Country- and Firm-Level Determinants in Environmental, Social, and Governance Disclosure.Maria Baldini, Lorenzo Dal Maso, Giovanni Liberatore, Francesco Mazzi & Simone Terzani - 2018 - Journal of Business Ethics 150 (1):79-98.
    In recent years, companies receive pressure to release environmental, social, and governance disclosure, since these are perceived as critical issues by society. Despite this pressure, ESG disclosure practices considerably vary by firm. Prior academic literature investigated country- and firm-level factors determining such variation, alternatively adopting the institutional and legitimacy theory. By combining these theories in a unique framework, this study investigates the extent to which social structures and social legitimization influence ESG disclosure practices and each pillar. Results obtained using a (...)
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  • Does CEO Risk-Aversion Affect Carbon Emission?Ashrafee Hossain, Samir Saadi & Abu S. Amin - 2022 - Journal of Business Ethics 182 (4):1171-1198.
    Does CEO tolerance to risk affect a firm’s long-run sustainability? Using CEO insider debt holding, we show that CEO’s risk-aversion encourages immoral yet rational decisions of emitting more greenhouse gas thereby adversely affecting the firm’s long-run sustainability. Our result is robust to several endogeneity tests including a quasi-natural experiment. Our finding also suggest that to mitigate potential adverse reactions from stakeholders, carbon emitting firms with risk-averse CEOs tend to spend more on CSR activities. Much of the heterogeneity in our results (...)
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  • Extracting Legitimacy: An Analysis of Corporate Responses to Accusations of Human Rights Abuses.Rajiv Maher, Moritz Neumann & Mette Slot Lykke - 2021 - Journal of Business Ethics 176 (4):609-628.
    We ask what type of neutralization techniques corporations apply to allegations of human rights abuses. We proceed by undertaking a Qualitative Content Analysis of 162 responses by ten extractives-sector firms over a period of 14 years. The firms were responding to accusations of human rights impacts documented by the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre. We use Garrett et al.’s :507–520, 1989) framework of neutralization techniques consisting of denial, justification, concession and excuse to examine the responses. During our QCA, we (...)
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  • GHG Reporting and Impression Management: An Assessment of Sustainability Reports from the Energy Sector.David Talbot & Olivier Boiral - 2018 - Journal of Business Ethics 147 (2):367-383.
    The objective of this study was to analyze the quality of climate information disclosed by companies and the impression management strategies they have developed to justify or conceal negative aspects of their performance. The study is based on a qualitative content analysis of the sustainability reports of 21 energy-sector companies that use the Global Reporting Initiative with A or A+ application levels over a period of 5 years. It contributes to the literature on climate disclosure by demonstrating the ineffectiveness of (...)
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  • Walking, Talking, or Standing Still? Climate Commitment and Performance in Publicly Listed Firms in Five Major Economies.Kyle S. Herman, Caterina Schiavoni & Gianni Guastella - forthcoming - Business and Society.
    Recent regulatory interventions are beginning to mandate climate disclosure in listed firms. Although compelling, prior studies demonstrate that firms can symbolically commit to climate and environmental disclosures yet not undertake action. Neo-institutional theory (NIT) suggests that two strategies exist: the legitimacy perspective, which manifests in symbolic efforts, and the efficiency perspective, which is more consistent with substantive efforts. In this article, we apply NIT to assess the climate transition efforts in large, publicly traded firms in five countries with similar regulatory (...)
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  • Communicating Moral Legitimacy in Controversial Industries: The Trade in Human Tissue.A. Rebecca Reuber & Anna Morgan-Thomas - 2019 - Journal of Business Ethics 154 (1):49-63.
    Globally active companies are involved in the discursive construction of moral legitimacy. Establishing normative conformance is problematic given the plurality of norms and values worldwide, and is particularly difficult for companies operating in morally controversial industries. In this paper, we investigate how organizations publicly legitimize the trade of human tissue for private profit when this practice runs counter to deep-seated and widespread moral beliefs. To do so, we use inductive, qualitative methods to analyze the website discourse of three types of (...)
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  • Ethical Issues in the Assurance of Sustainability Reports: Perspectives from Assurance Providers.Olivier Boiral, Iñaki Heras-Saizarbitoria, Marie-Christine Brotherton & Julie Bernard - 2019 - Journal of Business Ethics 159 (4):1111-1125.
    The objective of this paper is to investigate, through a qualitative study based on 38 semi-structured interviews with agents who provide assurance of sustainability reports, how they perceive and manage ethical issues underlying the verification of sustainability reports. Most of the ethical issues observed involve four interconnected aspects: the commercialism underlying sustainability assurance, the symbolic nature of the verification process, interdependency between auditing and consulting activities, and familiarity with the audited companies. The findings shed light on the reflexivity of assurance (...)
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  • Accounting for the Unaccountable: Biodiversity Reporting and Impression Management.Olivier Boiral - 2016 - Journal of Business Ethics 135 (4):751-768.
    This paper explores the strategies organizations use to demonstrate their accountability for biodiversity and legitimize their impact in this area through the use of techniques of neutralization. Neutralization aims to manage stakeholder impressions on very socially sensitive issues. Based on the content analysis of 148 sustainability reports from mining organizations, the study sheds light on the successful use of rhetoric in reports on non-measurable and potentially unaccountable issues. Specifically, the study shows that mining organizations use four main techniques of neutralization (...)
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  • The Influence of the Immediate Manager on the Avoidance of Non-green Behaviors in the Workplace: A Three-Wave Moderated-Mediation Model.Florence Stinglhamber, Nicolas Raineri, Jorge H. Mejía Morelos & Pascal Paillé - 2019 - Journal of Business Ethics 155 (3):723-740.
    Although it has been recognized that employees regularly engage in non-green behaviors, little research has been conducted to explain how these behaviors may be avoided. Using data from a three-wave study, this study tested a moderated-mediation model in which trust in the immediate manager was expected to increase the indirect effect of supervisory support for the environment on non-green behaviors through employee environmental commitment. While the findings showed, as predicted, that exchange relationships with the immediate manager reduce the tendency of (...)
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  • The Frontstage and Backstage of Corporate Sustainability Reporting: Evidence from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge Bill.Charles H. Cho, Matias Laine, Robin W. Roberts & Michelle Rodrigue - 2018 - Journal of Business Ethics 152 (3):865-886.
    While proponents of sustainability reporting believe in its potential to help corporations be accountable and transparent about their social and environmental impacts, there has been growing criticism asserting that such reporting schemes are utilized primarily as impression management tools. Drawing on Goffman’s self-presentation theory and its frontstage/backstage analogy, we contrast the frontstage sustainability discourse of a sample of large U.S. oil and gas firms to their backstage corporate political activities in the context of the passage of the American-Made Energy and (...)
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  • ‘Business Unusual’: Building BoP 3.0.Danielle A. Chmielewski, Krzysztof Dembek & Jennifer R. Beckett - 2020 - Journal of Business Ethics 161 (1):211-229.
    With over three billion people currently living below the poverty line, finding better ways to lift people out of poverty is a concern of scholars from a range of disciplines. Within Management Studies, the focus is on developing market-based solutions to poverty alleviation through Bottom/Base-of-the-Pyramid initiatives. To date, these have enjoyed limited success, sometimes even exacerbating the problems they attempt to solve. As a result, there is a growing academic and practitioner push for a third iteration—BoP 3.0—that moves closer to (...)
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