IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/seaccj/v34y2014i3p172-186.html

Incorporating Materiality Considerations into Analyses of Absence from Sustainability Reporting

Author

Listed:
  • Jeffrey Unerman
  • Franco Zappettini

Abstract

This paper highlights the need to take materiality into account when analysing the absence of social and/or environmental disclosures from organisational sustainability reports. It argues that materiality must be considered as a prerequisite when researchers seek to interpret lack of disclosures of specific social and/or environmental issues or incidents. Illustrating these arguments using an example from interpretation of absence from reporting in a recent award-winning paper, we contend that such interpretations can only be justified if organisational processes related to materiality are factored into the analysis of rhetorical or symbolic representations of sustainability within organisational reporting, a point that tends to be missed in studies of absence from sustainability reporting.

Suggested Citation

  • Jeffrey Unerman & Franco Zappettini, 2014. "Incorporating Materiality Considerations into Analyses of Absence from Sustainability Reporting," Social and Environmental Accountability Journal, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 34(3), pages 172-186, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:seaccj:v:34:y:2014:i:3:p:172-186
    DOI: 10.1080/0969160X.2014.965262
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/0969160X.2014.965262
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/0969160X.2014.965262?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:seaccj:v:34:y:2014:i:3:p:172-186. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/REAJ20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.