This paper serves as an introduction to this special issue of Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal ; an issue which embraces themes associated with social and environmental reporting (SAR) and its role in maintaining or creating organisational legitimacy. In an effort to place this...

This study examines the social and environmental disclosures of BHP Ltd (one of the largest Australian companies) from 1983 to 1997 to ascertain the extent and type of annual report social and environmental disclosures over the period, and whether such disclosures can be explained by the...

Purpose – The aim of the paper is to describe and explain, using a combination of interviews and content analysis, the social and environmental reporting practices of a major garment export organisation within a developing country. Design/methodology/approach – Senior executives from a major...

Within Australia there is ageneral absence of professional or legislative rules requiring companies to provide information relating to their environmental performance or any environmental initiatives undertaken. Previous research studies have shown that many firms present environmental...

Reports on the results of a survey of various groups of annual report users as to the importance, or “materiality”, of environmental information to decisions they may wish to make. Also investigates how environmental information is ranked in importance relative to various other items of...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the propensity of some researchers within the accounting research community (and elsewhere) to ignore potentially rich insights available from other paradigms, and the implications this has for the advancement of knowledge both from an...