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Abstract

This paper serves as an introduction to this special issue of Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal; an issue which embraces themes associated with social and environmental reporting (SAR) and its role in maintaining or creating organisational legitimacy. In an effort to place this research in context the paper begins by making reference to contemporary trends occurring in social and environmental accounting research generally, and this is then followed by an overview of some of the many research questions which are currently being addressed in the area. Understanding motivations for disclosure is shown to be one of the issues attracting considerable research attention, and the desire to legitimise an organisations operations is in turn shown to be one of the many possible motivations. The role of legitimacy theory in explaining managers decisions is then discussed and it is emphasised that legitimacy theory, as it is currently used, must still be considered to be a relatively underdeveloped theory of managerial behaviour. Nevertheless, it is argued that the theory provides useful insights. Finally, the paper indicates how the other papers in this issue of AAAJ contribute to the ongoing development of legitimacy theory in SAR research.

Concluding comments

As this paper demonstrates, there is a growing interest in researching various social and environmental accounting issues. Such interest has particularly grown since the latter half of the 1990s. One particular issue that has attracted a deal of research attention is the social and environmental reporting practices of corporate entities. As long as such disclosures remain predominantly of a voluntary nature then accounting academics will undoubtedly continue efforts to understand the motivations for reporting. As was indicated in this paper, there can be many motivations driving managers to externally report information about an organisations social and environmental performance. One such motivation might be the desire to legitimise certain aspects of an organisations operations.

Legitimacy theory, the theoretical basis of the four following papers, provides a foundation for understanding how and why managers might use externallyfocused reports to benefit an organisation. While legitimacy theory, as it is currently applied, might still be considered to be in need of further refinement, papers such as those that follow will hopefully help other researchers to further develop theory to explain corporate social and environmental reporting practices.