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Corporate social responsibility as a legitimacy maintenance strategy in the professional accountancy firm

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  • Duff, Angus

Abstract

This paper investigates how accountancy firms use corporate social responsibility (CSR) as a device to maintain legitimacy with key constituents. It explores who these constituents (audiences) are for their CSR actions and the strategies they use to maintain legitimacy with these audiences. Interview-based evidence from 18 large accountancy firms in the United Kingdom (UK) identifies the main CSR constituents as: clients and potential clients of the firm; graduates as potential entrants to the industry; internal audiences represented by the firms' staff and partners; and other external audiences constructed as members of those local communities in which the firm operate. In the largest firms, maintaining pragmatic legitimacy with some client, graduate and internal audiences is frequently dependent on the development of moral legitimacy established with other external constituents (communities). Consequently, the typologies of legitimacy developed are largely pragmatic, the most ephemeral and most easily attained form, rather than something that is enduring, embedded and taken-for-granted.

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  • Duff, Angus, 2017. "Corporate social responsibility as a legitimacy maintenance strategy in the professional accountancy firm," The British Accounting Review, Elsevier, vol. 49(6), pages 513-531.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:bracre:v:49:y:2017:i:6:p:513-531
    DOI: 10.1016/j.bar.2017.08.001
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    2. Maryam Safari & Jacqueline Birt & Yi Xiang, 2022. "The sociology of compensation inequality in upper‐echelon positions: evidence from Australia," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 62(2), pages 2615-2649, June.
    3. Qiaowen Zhang & Annalien de Vries, 2022. "Seeking Moral Legitimacy through Corporate Social Responsibility: Evidence from Chinese Manufacturing Multinationals," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(9), pages 1-21, April.
    4. Uyar, Ali & Lodh, Suman & Nandy, Monomita & Kuzey, Cemil & Karaman, Abdullah S., 2023. "Tradeoff between corporate investment and CSR: The moderating effect of financial slack, workforce slack, and board gender diversity," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 87(C).
    5. Yuan-Shuh Lii & May-Ching Ding & Chih-Huang Lin, 2018. "Fair or Unfair: The Moderating Effect of Sustainable CSR Practices on Anticipatory Justice Following Service Failure Recovery," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(12), pages 1-21, December.
    6. Passetti, Emilio & Rinaldi, Leonardo, 2020. "Micro-processes of justification and critique in a water sustainability controversy: Examining the establishment of moral legitimacy through accounting," The British Accounting Review, Elsevier, vol. 52(3).
    7. Cornelia Beck & Geoffrey Frost & Stewart Jones, 2018. "CSR disclosure and financial performance revisited: A cross-country analysis," Australian Journal of Management, Australian School of Business, vol. 43(4), pages 517-537, November.

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