Sustainability reporting and impression management: A case study in the oil and gas industry
Sustainability reporting and impression management: A case study in the oil and gas industry

Summary/Abstract: 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.

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