Representative account or greenwashing? Voluntary sustainability reports in Australia's mining/metals and financial services industries
基于合法性理论，分析了澳大利亚金融服务和采矿/金属公司2011-2019年的可持续发展报告，发现采矿/金属行业更倾向于代表性报告，而金融服务行业更倾向于绿色洗白，且2016年GRI重要性原则澄清后金融服务披露质量下降。
Abstract Why are more and more companies voluntarily issuing costly, potentially exposing standalone sustainability reports on environmentally and socially problematic issues? Using legitimacy theory, this study analyses ways companies seek to strategically enhance legitimacy by leaning towards either ‘representative’ reporting of both favourable and unfavourable information especially in an industry's highest impact domains, or ‘greenwashing’ (including whitewashing non‐environmental issues), which downplays unfavourables and high‐impact domains and highlights favourable but less relevant points. Content analysis compared Global Reporting Initiatives (GRI) reports from 2011 to 2019 by Australian financial services companies (107 reports) and mining and metals companies (122). Specifically, to critique reporting quality in fine grain, it disaggregated results into levels (from omission to full quantitative treatment) of disclosure of good/bad/neutral news indicators and violation‐related/non‐violation‐related ones and identified highest impact domains. Neither industry's reporting was very representative. Relatively though, mining and metals leant towards representation: fuller disclosure on environmental aspects (its highest impact domain), including unfavourables: bad and violation‐related indicators. Financial services companies only led in disclosing neutral social indicators, not bad or violation‐related ones, so leant towards greenwashing. Results also suggest that after the GRI clarifying materiality principle in 2016, financial services disclosure quality dropped further by de‐emphasising environmental without lifting social disclosures, while mining and metals' stayed unchanged. The results confirm and better specify widely indicated reporting weaknesses, contributing to content analysis methodology and legitimacy theory. This arms guideline setters, investors and other stakeholders to better evaluate/design reports and might encourage firms to voluntarily improve disclosures.