Materiality in socio-environmental disclosure through the lenses of legitimacy theory and ompression management

• Ano de defesa: 2024
• Autor(a) principal: Cunha, Cristiana Lara
• Tipo de documento: Tese
• Tipo de acesso: Acesso aberto
• Idioma: eng
• Instituição de defesa: Biblioteca Digitais de Teses e Dissertações da USP
• Palavras-chave em Português: Disclosure; Impression management; Legitimacy theory; Materialidade; Materiality; Relatórios de sustentabilidade; Sustainability reports; Teoria da legitimidade
• Link de acesso: https://www.teses.usp.br/teses/disponiveis/12/12139/tde-30102024-130523/

Sustainability reports arise from pressure and demands from interest groups for companies to disclose information that goes beyond just financial statements aimed at shareholders. Thus, companies began to realize the need to disclose information that concerned the economic, social and environmental aspects of their operations. It is in this context that the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) guidelines emerged, which later became the standard most used by companies to report their sustainability information. These guidelines have undergone modifications over time and, as of 2013, they began to consider the principle of materiality as a central point in their preparation. This principle attests that sustainability reports must include information that is important to both the company and its stakeholders. Therefore, from the perspective of legitimacy theory, we seek to answer the following research questions: How does impression management contribute to the process of elaborating materiality? And how does the materiality process relate to the companys legitimacy? Documentary analyzes of the sustainability reports of the chosen companies that followed the GRI Standards 2021 format and semi-structured interviews were carried out with those responsible for preparing the sustainability reports. The data, analyzed using the content analysis methodology, showed that companies tend to disclose positive information to the detriment of the negative impacts generated by their operations, and use impression management techniques, which lead to non-transparent and unbalanced results. Also, it is not clear how the process of engagement with stakeholders is carried out to prepare materiality. Thus, it contributes not only to theory, in order to bring more evident connections between materiality and legitimacy, but also to management, giving a clearer perception of how to properly include the materiality process in sustainability reports.