IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/seaccj/v34y2014i3p157-171.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Content Analysis of Social and Environmental Reports of Italian Cooperative Banks: Methodological Issues

Author

Listed:
  • Caterina Pesci
  • Ericka Costa

Abstract

This paper focuses on content analysis techniques for evaluating the role of non-narrative/visual disclosure in corporate social and environmental reports. The research examines 98 reports from Italian Cooperative Banks using different content analysis techniques to define stakeholder prioritisation, i.e. the total volume of disclosure for each stakeholder. The collected empirical data are used as a tool to address a methodological issue regarding the most appropriate method of quantification in content analysis. The first content analysis performed is based on narrative count, while the second analysis investigates visual count (pictures, graphs, and tables). The final investigation reveals that in determining stakeholder prioritisation, it is possible to neutrally apply content analysis based on narrative or visual counts. However, when discriminating among different categories of stakeholders, the use of narrative as opposed to visual content analysis produced diverse results. The research also found a massive occurrence of visuals in corporate social and environmental reports, which consequently implies that visual disclosure cannot and should not be ignored in content analysis studies.

Suggested Citation

  • Caterina Pesci & Ericka Costa, 2014. "Content Analysis of Social and Environmental Reports of Italian Cooperative Banks: Methodological Issues," Social and Environmental Accountability Journal, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 34(3), pages 157-171, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:seaccj:v:34:y:2014:i:3:p:157-171
    DOI: 10.1080/0969160X.2014.904239
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/0969160X.2014.904239
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/0969160X.2014.904239?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 search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Stefania Veltri & Elena Cristiano & Olga Ferraro, 2023. "Examining the quality of the consolidated mandatory non‐financial statements of a cooperative banking group: A longitudinal analysis," Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 30(4), pages 1573-1587, July.
    2. Michaela HORUCKOVA & Thierry BAUDASSE, 2017. "Content Analysis Applied To Social And Environmental Reporting," LEO Working Papers / DR LEO 2521, Orleans Economics Laboratory / Laboratoire d'Economie d'Orleans (LEO), University of Orleans.
    3. Michaela HORUCKOVA & Thierry BAUDASSE, 2017. "Content Analysis Applied To Social And Environmental Reporting," LEO Working Papers / DR LEO 2529, Orleans Economics Laboratory / Laboratoire d'Economie d'Orleans (LEO), University of Orleans.
    4. Olga Ferraro & Elena Cristiano, 2022. "Investigating the Quality of Gender Equality Non-Financial Information Disclosed in the Cooperative Credit Sector: A Case Study," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 15(12), pages 1-13, December.

    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:157-171. 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.