Article2018

Empathy, closeness, and distance in non-profit accountability

Ericka Costa · Caterina Pesci · Michele Andreaus · Emanuele Taufer

40 citations0/0 files storedAccounting Auditing & Accountability Journal

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Corporate Social Responsibility Reporting Auditing, Earnings Management, Governance Accounting Theory and Financial Reporting

Abstract

Purpose 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. Design/methodology/approach 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. Findings 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. Originality/value 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.

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References

1995Managing Legitimacy: Strategic and Institutional Approaches 2008Qualitative Data Analysis 1997Toward a Theory of Stakeholder Identification and Salience: Defining the Principle of who and What Really Counts 2002Introduction 1995Corporate social and environmental reporting 2020An overview of content analysis 2006The role of environmental disclosures as tools of legitimacy: A research note 1998Managing Public Impressions: Environmental Disclosures in Annual Reports

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