Professional Documents
Culture Documents
1. Introduction
Corporate social behaviour has become an
important aspect of business society. Not only are
the press and society increasingly paying attention to it, the number of companies reporting on
their social and environmental achievements has
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2. Legitimacy theory
Of the theoretical frameworks employed to
analyse corporate social reporting, viz. decision
usefulness studies, economic theory studies, and
the social and political economy studies (e.g.
Gray et al., 1995, 1996; Hackston and Milne,
1996) the latter is particularly relevant in the
context of this paper. Within that category,
several theoretical frameworks are used, viz. the
political economy, the stakeholder theory, and
the legitimacy theory which may be viewed as
overlapping perspectives (Gray et al., 1995,
1996). Of these, legitimacy theory is the most
widely used framework to explain disclosures
with regard to the environmental and social
behaviour of organisations (Gray et al., 1995; for
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3.6. Reputation/image,
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industry, and mass media
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4. Impression management
4.2. Impression management strategies
4.1. Definition
As indicated before, organisations can try to
influence people's perceptions of the company by
using self-presentational devices. Self-presentation or impression management is a Held of study
Negative,
accounting
Addresses
responsibility
Entitlements
Excuses
Addresses
consequences
Enhancements
Justifications
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confronted with a boycott (to which many customers responded) in, e.g. The Netherlands,
Germany and the United Kingdom (and as a
consequence Shell experienced a drop in sales),
but also the politicians outside the United
Kingdom put question marks with Shell's
decision, though being formally and governmentally approved.
In order to counter these effects, and possibly
to try to influence people's perceptions. Shell
responded somewhat stubbornly (but in conformity to their identity; see Dutton and Dukerich,
1990): they remained that the sinking of the
Brent Spar was the best solution, and tried to
substantiate this by placing adds in national newspapers in which they referred to independent
research, and they said that Greenpeace made
false accusations (for which Greenpeace afterwards made apologies). Typically, Shell in its
initial reactions and even after its "climbdown"
stressed that it had followed the rules, as may be
clear from the following quotation from The
Financial Times (21 June 1995):
Shell's decision to abandon its plans for the Brent
Spar is a deeply humiliating climbdown for a
company which prides itself on its high environmental standards and thoroughness.
Mr Chris Fay, the chairman of Shell UK,
normally an ebullient man, looked downcast and
dismayed last night as he broke the news in the
glare of television lights. But even in defeat, Shell
found it difficult to accept that it had made a
catastrophic misjudgement. Deep-sea disposal was
still the option favoured by years of independent
study, Mr Fay insisted, and everything had been
done exactly according to the book.
These reactions, however, had no effect on
public opinion, except that it worsened Shell's
image. By communicating this way Shell, unintentionally, confirmed people's (including at
that time media's) perceptions that Shell was a
powerful company which did what it wanted and
hardly reckons with its social responsibilities.''
Further "evidence" for this negative image was
provided some months later regarding Shell's
role in Nigeria and especially with concern to
the Ogonis. In addition, also the images of other
oil companies were affected negatively by these
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6. Discussion
From the preceding discussion on the application
of corporate communication to corporate social
reporting it is clear that there are commonalties
and differences with the current framework. The
most obvious commonality is that both the corporate communication as well as, e.g. the legitimacy perspective view corporate social reporting
as a means to influence people's perceptions.
Whereas under the current framework corporate social reporting is aimed at providing information to legitimise company's actions, corporate
social reporting from a corporate communication
perspective is aimed at protecting or enhancing
its image or reputation. Moreover, from the corporate communication perspective it also can be
argued that corporate social reporting can contribute in creating a competitive advantage:
creating a positive image may imply that people
are to a greater extent prepared to do business
with the company and buy its products.
The application of the corporate communication concepts to Shell's handling of the Brent
Spar shows that Shell's early responses, placing an
emphasis on rationality and compliance to regulations, were not very successful. Indeed, this way
of responding seemed to worsen Shell's image
(and that of the whole oil sector too): media
coverage of Shell in Germany, the Netherlands,
and the United Kingdom was very negative as
research of Oegema et al. (1998) has indicated.
However, this way of communicating or self-presentation ("buffering") was in conformity with
its identity (Dutton and Dukerich, 1991) and
seems "natural" to large companies that possess
an important resource (Meznar and Nigh, 1995).
Having learned from its experiences and because
"a company's reputation can be its most valuable
asset, but when it is damaged it becomes the
albatross around the corporate neck" ("Projecting
the values" in Shell World, April 1999 on
media.shell.com). Shell not only changed its
communication strategy to "bridging" but, in
addition, placed a large emphasis on ethical standards. In doing so. Shell changed its identity,
indicating that business is not a question of
"profits or principles" but that both are important. This "new" image of a company that highly
values principles and strives at more openness and
transparency became apparent through several
initiatives, e.g. a stakeholder dialogue on its
business principles and the publication of a value
reports since 1998. Although Shell's intentions
may be pure, it also seems that these initiatives
were in fact aimed at influencing people's
thoughts about Shell and its place in society and,
hence, its reputation.
Concerning the possibilities for future research
the "Shell-case" could be very interesting: especially studies whether, and if so, to what extent
the publication of its ethical report has contributed to create a more positive image may
be very useful. Such research may validate the
Acknowledgements
Earlier versions of the paper have been presented
at the 22nd European Accounting Association
Congress in Bordeaux (July 1999) and at the 12th
European Business Ethics Network Congress in
Amsterdam (September 1999). The author would
like to acknowledge the helpful comments made
by Muel Kaptein, Jacek Sojka, Leo van der Tas,
Johan Wempe, and the participants at the two
workshops.
Notes
' Following Gray et al. (1996, p. 3) corporate social
reporting may be defined as " . . . the process of communicating the social and environmental effects of
organisations economic actions to particular interest
groups within society and to society at large. As such,
it involves extending the accountability of organisations (particularly companies), beyond the traditional
role of providing a financial account to the owners
of capital, in particular, shareholders". Usually it
involves reporting on the following areas: the environment, human rights, animal protection, employees'
interests, and ethical standards (Gray et al., 1995,
1996).
^ Research in different countries show that social and
environmental disclosures in annual reports are biased:
companies stress positive achievements, but hardly pay
attention to negative news (Deegan and colleagues,
1996, 1998; Guthrie and Parker, 1990; Neu et al.,
1998). Such a self-serving bias is also present in the
explanations of improvements or deterioration of
companies' results in the CEO's Letter to the
Shareholder. Research by e.g. Aerts (1994) and Staw
et al. (1983) show that managers claim responsibility
for successes, but are less prepared to accept responsibility for failures (i.e. deterioration of performance).
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References
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