ABSTRACT
Rising levels of voluntary, unregulated corporate social, environmental and sustainability reporting (SER hereafter) have failed to satisfy a wide range of critics, who have argued that they exhibit a number of major shortcomings, including, inter alia : incompleteness (Belal, 2002 ; Adams, 2004 ; Bouten et al., 2011 ); unreliability (Swift and Dando, 2002 ; O’Dwyer and Owen, 2005 ); silencing and/or manipulation of the views of stakeholders (Owen et al., 2001 ; Unerman and Bennett, 2004 ; Archel et al., 2011 ); falsely legitimating businesses’ belief in the sustainability of their operations (Brown and Deegan, 1998 ; Campbell, 2000 ); promoting a ‘business as usual’ agenda (Larrinaga-Gonzalez and Bebbington, 2001 ); conveying weak versions of sustainable development (Bebbington and Thomson, 1996 ); and managerial capture of the social and environmental agenda (Owen et al., 2000 ; O’Dwyer, 2003 ; Baker, 2010 ).
