Bedrijven houden zich steeds meer bezig met duurzaamheid. Het begrip wordt vaker meegenomen in strategische en operationele besluitvormingsprocessen. Maar het intern wettigen en verankeren van nieuwe duurzaamheidsactiviteiten, inclusief boekhouding in verband met duurzaamheid, is binnen een organisatie is een uitdagend, complex en onvoldoende onderzocht proces. Rebecca Maughan wil met haar promotieonderzoek inzicht geven in de wisselwerking tussen verschillende aspecten van een duurzaamheidsprogramma en de interacties tussen het programma en het interne legitimatieproces van een organisatie.

Samenvatting:

This study extends and deepens our understanding of why and how organisational sustainability activities and accounting unfold and embed over time. It presents a longitudinal case study examining the emergence and evolution of an environmental management system, environmental management accounting, sustainability reporting, and a sustainability programme in a large, family-owned group of companies. The case analysis is theoretically framed using the concepts of organisational identity and internal legitimation.
The study reveals an enduring interplay between the organisation’s sustainability programme and its organisational identity and internal legitimation processes. It demonstrates how key participants in the sustainability programme used a variety of strategies to seek legitimacy for the programme from internal audiences and powerful stakeholders while also engaging in their own legitimacy (re)evaluations. While prior research has identified a set of strategies for establishing external legitimacy, this study finds that legitimating ‘identity talk’ is an important additional mechanism in the process of establishing internal legitimacy for new organisational activities. In contrast with prior research, the study uncovers how external sustainability reporting can be a by-product of other sustainability-related activities rather than an organisation’s primary medium (or output) of the process of engaging with sustainability. The study shows how despite a highly supportive organisational environment, external sustainability reporting may be weakly and temporally legitimated within an organisation rather than institutionalised.

Promotie 12 september aan de Universiteit van Amsterdam (UvA):

Mw. R. Maughan: Through the Looking Glass: The Emergence, Evolution and Embedding of Sustainability Accounting in a Family Business. Promotor is prof. dr. B.G.D. O’Dwyer. Copromotor is dr. ir. S.P. van Triest.