IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/spr/csrchp/978-3-030-41142-8_8.html
   My bibliography  Save this book chapter

CSR and Greenwashing: A Matter of Perception in the Search of Legitimacy

In: Accounting, Accountability and Society

Author

Listed:
  • Federica Balluchi

    (University of Parma)

  • Arianna Lazzini

    (Modena and Reggio Emilia University)

  • Riccardo Torelli

    (University of Parma)

Abstract

In recent decades, corporate communication has undergone significant changes in terms of channel, content and receivers. To be accountable, companies are called upon to satisfy a plurality of stakeholders who are increasingly interested in non-financial information. In addition, the type and scope of information can significantly influence the competitive advantage of the company and especially, its credibility and reputation. Today, companies are required to engage in corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives to give response to the call for action from their stakeholders and society. However, some companies engage in CSR initiatives with the aim of only achieving or increasing their level of legitimacy. When companies offer misleading communication and then try to influence the perceptions of their stakeholders, they incur the phenomenon known in literature as “greenwashing”. Thus, the aim of this work is to analyse the phenomenon of greenwashing, tracing its evolution in the extant literature. Greenwashing will then be analysed through the lens of the legitimacy theory and starting from Habermas’s communication theory to define and broaden the relationships between the concepts of disclosure, credibility, legitimacy, perception and greenwashing.

Suggested Citation

  • Federica Balluchi & Arianna Lazzini & Riccardo Torelli, 2020. "CSR and Greenwashing: A Matter of Perception in the Search of Legitimacy," CSR, Sustainability, Ethics & Governance, in: Mara Del Baldo & Jesse Dillard & Maria-Gabriella Baldarelli & Massimo Ciambotti (ed.), Accounting, Accountability and Society, pages 151-166, Springer.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:csrchp:978-3-030-41142-8_8
    DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-41142-8_8
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Dina Lucia Todaro & Riccardo Torelli, 2024. "From greenwashing to ESG‐washing: A focus on the circular economy field," Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 31(5), pages 4034-4046, September.
    2. Ampofo, Sandra Asantewa & Yunfei, Shao & Opoku-Mensah, Evans & Effah, Derrick & Tuffour, Priscilla & Darko, Debora & Asiedu-Aryeh, Emelia, 2023. "Sustainable mining: Examining the direct and configuration path of legitimacy pressure, dual embeddedness resource dependency and green mining towards resource management," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 86(PA).
    3. Jiawen Chen & Tong Xiao & Feng Zhang, 2023. "Paradox of CSR distinctiveness: The tension between stakeholder legitimacy evaluation and stakeholder integration efficiency," Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 30(6), pages 2906-2923, November.
    4. Massimiliano Cerciello & Francesco Busato & Simone Taddeo, 2023. "The effect of sustainable business practices on profitability. Accounting for strategic disclosure," Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 30(2), pages 802-819, March.
    5. Cao, Peng & Sial, Muhammad Safdar & Ã lvarez-Otero, Susana & Brugni, Talles Vianna & Comite, Ubaldo, 2024. "Eco-engagement: Tracing CSR communication's ripple effect on consumer hospitality loyalty," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).
    6. Barić, Andrija, 2022. "The Role of Social Responsibility in Company Strategy," Proceedings of the ENTRENOVA - ENTerprise REsearch InNOVAtion Conference (2022), Hybrid Conference, Opatija, Croatia, in: Proceedings of the ENTRENOVA - ENTerprise REsearch InNOVAtion Conference, Hybrid Conference, Opatija, Croatia, 17-18 June 2022, pages 390-405, IRENET - Society for Advancing Innovation and Research in Economy, Zagreb.
    7. Yanhong Tang & Rui Yang & Yingwen Chen & Mengjin Du & Yichen Yang & Xin Miao, 2020. "Greenwashing of Local Government: The Human-Caused Risks in the Process of Environmental Information Disclosure in China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(16), pages 1-14, August.

    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:spr:csrchp:978-3-030-41142-8_8. 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: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    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.