Corporate environmental reporting in the China context: The interplay of stakeholder salience, socialist ideology and state power

Abstract

Research considers that the increase in corporate environmental reporting over the past decades has been a response to stakeholder demand and pressure within and beyond the boundaries of business operations. Recent empirical studies have begun to extrapolate the stakeholder concept and rationale into developing countries when explaining their growing reporting practices. However, how this global trend is played out in the particular institutional developing country context remains unanswered. This research addresses the issue by employing a case study of a leading mining company in China. The study finds that corporate managers do understand the importance of stakeholder communication and engagement. Such importance has been framed into national social obligations within the socialist ideology long embedded and more recently reinforced in the minds of managers. It reveals an imprinting process of ideological prioritisation through which imprinted socialist philosophies and values are entrenched in perceived stakeholder salience and responsibility for environmental reporting. This process is decoupled from delivering procedural compliance via accountability reporting because of the dominance of State power and national collective interests over individual rights. This study suggests that socially and politically embedded philosophies and ideology ingrained in a country can create another layer of criteria when managers interpret and determine the salience of individual stakeholders and make reporting decisions. It highlights that the extent to which the salience of stakeholders is understood and responded to in the environmental reporting process is conditioned by the structure and operation of a country's political and social system.