Social and environmental accounting as symbolic and substantive means of legitimation: The case of HIV/AIDS reporting in South Africa

Teerooven Soobaroyen · Collins Gyakari Ntim

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Corporate Social Responsibility Reporting Auditing, Earnings Management, Governance Corporate Identity and Reputation

Abstract

We develop an interpretive framework which combines Suchman's (1995) M.C.SuchmanManaging legitimacy: Strategic and institutional approachesAcademy of Management Review2031995571606[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar] work on the dynamics of organisational legitimacy and Ashforth and Gibbs’ (1990) B.E.AshforthB.W.GibbsThe double-edge of organizational legitimationOrganization Science121990177193[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar] concepts of symbolic and substantive management to investigate how and why public corporations rely on symbolic and substantive social disclosures. We apply this framework to the case of the HIV/AIDS health crisis in South Africa (SA) and examine the corporate disclosure behaviour of a sample of 75 SA-listed corporations from 2003 to 2009. We use content analysis procedures to codify the disclosures and devise a disclosure index based on the Global Reporting Initiative guidelines on HIV/AIDS to assess whether corporations have adopted a substantive management strategy. Our findings suggest that public corporations use a combination of substantive and symbolic disclosures in a bid to seek specific forms of moral legitimacy (structural, procedural, and consequential) and pragmatic legitimacy (dispositional, influence, and exchange). Our analysis reveals that the mix of substantive and symbolic disclosures is altered as a result of changes in stakeholder salience, societal attitudes and the corporation's current ‘state’ of legitimacy. Overall, the findings demonstrate that our analytical framework is useful in understanding how substantive and/or symbolic disclosures could be relied upon to achieve specific types of organisational legitimacy.

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References

2010Strategic management a stakeholder approach 1995Managing Legitimacy: Strategic and Institutional Approaches 1997Toward a Theory of Stakeholder Identification and Salience: Defining the Principle of who and What Really Counts 2007Why would corporations behave in socially responsible ways? an institutional theory of corporate social responsibility 2010Strategic Management 1975Organizational Legitimacy: Social Values and Organizational Behavior 1995Corporate social and environmental reporting 1990The Double-Edge of Organizational Legitimation

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