Organizational Legitimacy And The Strategic Use Of Accounting Information: Three Studies Related To Social And Environmental Dis

This dissertation consists of three separate, but inter-related, studies overarching a common theme labeled the role played by social and environmental accounting disclosures using different methodologies and framed within legitimacy theory. The first study investigates the use of different language techniques in social and environmental disclosures (SED) and tests whether the impression management hypothesis holds when disclosures are measured as such. The second study extends the legitimacy on the Internet arguments of Patten and Crampton (2004) by examining the content and presentation of corporate website environmental disclosure in relation to firm environmental performance of four size-matched sample groups constructed based on industry environmental sensitivity and America\u27s Toxic 100 membership (the top 100 polluters in the US). The third study investigates whether and how Total, one of the world\u27s largest integrated oil and gas companies headquartered in France, utilized legitimation strategies such as social and environmental disclosures, to respond to two significant environmental incidents. Taken together, these three studies build upon prior theoretical and empirical work to substantiate and advance social and environmental accounting research using various methodological lenses and perspectives