Since the first Earth Day in the 1970s, corporate environmental performance has increased dramatically, and cases of greenwashing have increased sharply. The term greenwash refers to a variety of different misleading communications that aim to form overly positive beliefs among stakeholders about a company's environmental practices. The growing number of corporate social responsibility claims, whether founded or not, creates difficulties for stakeholders in distinguishing between truly positive business performance and companies that only appear to embrace a model of sustainable development. In this context, through the lens of legitimacy and signalling theory, we intend to understand and assess the different influences that various types of misleading communications about environmental issues have on stakeholders' perceptions of corporate environmental responsibility and greenwashing. Stakeholder responses to an environmental scandal will also be assessed. The hypotheses tested through a four-for-two design experiment reveal that different levels of greenwashing have a significantly different influence on stakeholders' perceptions of corporate environmental responsibility and stakeholders' reactions to environmental scandals.

Materiality is the driver through which companies can select issues to be included in nonfinancial reports favouring the expectations of all stakeholders. The aim of this research is to investigate, under the lens of Stakeholder Theory and Instrumental Stakeholder Theory, the possible relationship between the application of the materiality principle in nonfinancial reports and the stakeholders' engagement processes, with a preliminary focus on different industries that are characterized by different types of stakeholder and on the application of Global Reporting Initiative and/or International Integrated Reporting Council guidelines promoting their direct involvement. A manual content analysis has been performed on the Italian “public interest entities” that published, for the 2017 year, a nonfinancial statement (Legislative Decree No 254/2016). The statistical analysis highlights the importance of industry, Global Reporting Initiative Standards application and stakeholder engagement in the reporting process, in particular in the materiality analysis, to achieve a high level of materiality application and good report quality for stakeholders.

Materiality is the driver through which companies can select issues to be included in nonfinancial reports favouring expectations of all the stakeholders. The aim of this research is to investigate, under the lens of Stakeholder Theory and Instrumental Stakeholder Theory, the possible relationship between the application of materiality principle in non-financial reports and the engagement of stakeholders, with a preliminary focus on different industries that are characterized by different types of stakeholder. We have subjected to a manual content analysis all the Italian listed companies that published a sustainability/integrated report in the years 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016 following guidelines of GRI and IIRC (a total of 148 reports). The next statistical analysis highlights, as research finding, the importance of industry and above all of stakeholder engagement in the reporting process, in particular in the materiality analysis, to achieve a high level of materiality application level and a good report quality for stakeholders.

In recent decades, corporate communication has undergone significant changes in terms of channel, content and receivers. To be accountable, companies are called upon to satisfy a plurality of stakeholders who are increasingly interested in nonfinancial information. In addition, the type and scope of information can significantly influence the competitive advantage of the company and especially, its credibility and reputation. Today, companies are required to engage in corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives to give response to the call for action from their stakeholders and society. However, some companies engage in CSR initiatives with the aim of only achieving or increasing their level of legitimacy. When companies offer misleading communication and then try to influence the perceptions of their stakeholders, they incur the phenomenon known in literature as "greenwashing". Thus, the aim of this work is to analyse the phenomenon of greenwashing, tracing its evolution in the extant literature. Greenwashing will then be analysed through the lens of the legitimacy theory and starting from Habermas's communication theory to define and broaden the relationships between the concepts of disclosure, credibility, legitimacy, perception and greenwashing.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to analyse the concepts of sustainability, responsibility and ethics focussing on their links and differences, also to understand how companies move respectively in these field; to understand how companies sometimes move away from the basic and deep meaning of these concepts, landing in a merely utilitarian sphere of personal advantage where ethics, instead of being an irreplaceable and essential stronghold, is found to be a fiction or just an instrument. Design/methodology/approach The methodology used assumes a theoretical critical approach and, based on the vast literature on the items, is based on a conceptual analysis of the themes of sustainability, corporate social responsibility (CSR) and ethics and of the behaviour that companies can adopt in the three contexts. A critical approach to these issues and concepts can effectively help us to understand how companies are responding to external demands and to the challenges of responsibility and sustainability, which are becoming increasingly pressing. Findings Ethics, sustainability, CSR and social and environmental reporting are distinct constructs with different meanings but linked by important conceptual and operational relationships. Research limitations/implications The results of the research are the consequence of the application of a critical approach based on a theoretical analysis of the concepts under study. It would be interesting to support the results achieved with empirical research studies. Practical implications This conceptual path helps scholars and companies themselves to understand the difference between the three key concepts analysed. Only by understanding the basic meaning will it be possible to really make one’s own and pursue it in the correct way. Social implications Nowadays, the authors are overwhelmed by these three concepts which are used as synonyms and incorrectly. This leads to confusion and misunderstandings. Knowledge of the characteristics and differences between these concepts and their concrete applications is of great importance. Originality/value This study tries to provide a critical discussion of how the three concepts intersect and differentiate, leading to concrete results or results that have nothing to do with their meaning. There are no conceptual papers in the literature that deal with the three concepts and also analyse the implications on the real world.