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Articulating corporate social reporting
Although corporate social reporting (CSR)[1] has been the subject of substantial academic accounting research for over two decades, the literature does not possess an overall coherence (see, for example, Ullmann, 1985). There are many reasons for this -- at least some of which arise as a result of CSR not sharing many of the core "certainties" of traditional accounting. So, for example, CSR is not enshrined in legislation equivalent to Companies Acts; as a result it is neither practised systematically by organizations nor able to claim either universal recognition or universal definition. Indeed, there is little about CSR which is not contestable -- and contested. CSR, at its broadest may embrace: both self-reporting by organizations and reporting about organizations by third parties; information in the annual report and any other form of communication; both public domain and private information; information in any medium (financial, non-financial, quantitative nonquantitative). It is not restricted necessarily by reference to selected information recipients; and the information deemed to be CSR may, ultimately, embrace any subject.
As if this were not enough, interest in CSR has waxed and waned as researchers have entered and left the field (Parker, 1986); there has been a lack of any agreed theoretical perspective to drive systematic research (Preston, 1983; Ullmann, 1985); the absence of systematic reporting by organizations has made traditional "positive" research more difficult[2] and CSR continually has attracted doubts about its legitimacy as an area of accounting research enquiry (Gray et a, 1987, 1988, 1991; Parker, 1986, 1991). Finally, this very uncertainty and the breadth of possibilities which may constitute CSR have been instrumental in making the subject more explicitly political than either is traditionally the case in accounting research (but see Cooper and Sherer, 1984; Tinker et al., 1982) or accounting researchers are historically equipped to handle (see, for example, Puxty, 1986, 1991; Tinker et a, 1991).
Seen in this light, two significantly different approaches to researching CSR have emerged in the literature. First, CSR may be treated as an addendum to conventional accounting activity and researched with the same assumptions and preconceptions which inform much of mainstream accounting research. Such an approach will usually take the financial community as the principal "users" of any CSR and will...