Show me? Inspire me? Make me? An institutional theory exploration of social and environmental reporting practices

Jacqueline Jarosz Wukich · Erica L. Neuman · Timothy J. Fogarty

30 citations0/0 files storedJournal of Accounting & Organizational Change

No readable copy stored yet — this record is metadata only.

No open-access location is known for this record yet.

Literature note Cite in a project Citation map

Corporate Social Responsibility Reporting Auditing, Earnings Management, Governance Financial Reporting and XBRL

Abstract

Purpose Albeit gradual and uneven, the emergence of social and environmental reporting by publicly held corporations has been a major development in the last few decades. This paper aims to explore patterns of the emergence of these disclosures. Using an institutional theory lens, this paper considers mimetic, normative and coercive possibilities. Design/methodology/approach US publicly traded company data from 2013 to 2019 is used to test the hypotheses. Mimetic forces are proxied with corporate board interlock frequency. Normative ones use the extent of gender diversity on corporate boards. Measures of business climate and industry regulatory sensitivity proxy coercive potentiality. Findings Studied in isolation, each of the three forces through which organizations pursue the heightened legitimacy of enhanced environmental and social disclosures has credibility. The strongest support exists for mimetic and normative mechanisms, perhaps because the US government has been reluctant to make these expanded disclosures mandatory. Research limitations/implications In the world of voluntary action, more attention to diffusion is needed. For these purposes, better proxies will be needed to study change. Social and environmental information should be separated for individual analysis. Practical implications At least in the USA, companies are attentive to what other companies are doing. There is something to be said for the ethical dimension of corporate transparency. Social implications Governmental action in this area has not been effective, at current levels. Corporate leadership is essential. Critical information is shared about disclosure by board members. Originality/value Although institutional theory makes several appearances in this area, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, the current study is the first empirical archival study to examine the three forces simultaneously, providing evidence as to the relative magnitude of each institutional force on environmental and social disclosures. Should these disclosures not be mandated by government, this study shows pathways for enhanced disclosures to continue to spread.

Paper brief

Loading…

Cite this work

Citation unavailable for this work.

BibTeX RIS CSL-JSON

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Citations in this library

Citation map →

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 30 citations exist upstream.

References

1983The Iron Cage Revisited: Institutional Isomorphism and Collective Rationality in Organizational Fields 1977Institutionalized Organizations: Formal Structure as Myth and Ceremony 1995Managing Legitimacy: Strategic and Institutional Approaches 1984Upper Echelons: The Organization as a Reflection of Its Top Managers 1991Strategic Responses to Institutional Processes 2009Women in the boardroom and their impact on governance and performance☆2010Voluntary Nonfinancial Disclosure and the Cost of Equity Capital: The Initiation of Corporate Social Responsibility Reporting 2012What We Know and Don’t Know About Corporate Social Responsibility

Explore the map →

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.

Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.