Sustainability Reporting and Impression Management: A Case Study in The Oil and Gas Industry

Research Question- How are corporate narratives used to build and restore corporate legitimacy? Motivation- Under certain circumstances, managers may be motivated to control stakeholders’ perception regarding organizational performance. As such, this study makes use of sustainability disclosures that were issued both prior and after a major incident in order to analyse the use of corporate narratives. Idea- The paper relies on the case of KazMunayGas International, with a view of analysing the evolution of the messages used in framing occupational safety issues. Data- The sustainability reports and corporate press releases issued by KMGI for the period 2015 and 2016 were explored. Tools- A manual content analysis was performed in order to evaluate the use of evaluations, repetitions and performance comparisons. Findings- A trend towards the use of positive evaluations of organizational performance was observed. Following the negative event, the use of several impression management strategies was documented. This reflected a general tendency to defend corporate legitimacy by favourably shaping the corporate image associated with occupational safety. Contribution- The paper aims to complement previous research on social and environmental disclosures that analysed the biased use of tone and graph distortions. In addition, the paper contributes to a literature that focused mainly on environmental disclosures by drawing on a case study that reveals occupational safety issues.