Content Analysis of Social, Environmental Reporting : What is New?

Purpose: The aim of this paper is to review the use of content analysis as a research method in understanding SEA and to examine current contemporary foci of this research tradition. Further, several research method issues relating to the use of content analysis are examined. Methodology: Contemporary focus and research issues are analyzed to provide some future directions for scholars in the field of SEA, by categorizing work in the SEA, social environmental reporting (SER) and intellectual capital reporting (ICR) literature, according to the following: normative literature/theory/commentaries; focus of empirical investigation; quality SER research; combined research methodologies; content analysis method issues. Findings: Literature indicates that few attempts have been made to combine other research methodologies with content analysis although it has proven fruitful with the limited investigation undertaken to examine aspects of SER. Further extending the performance reporting by combining SER with ICR may provide useful information. Research Implications: Increasingly, researchers in the field of social and environmental accounting (SEA) need to be able to justify the specific research methods they use when collecting the empirical data that they examine in order to support and test opinions regarding the merit of different approaches to managing, measuring and reporting of SEA