Where Is the Accountability in International Accountability Standards?: A Decoupling Perspective

Abstract

ABSTRACT:A common complaint by academics and practitioners is that the application of international accountability standards (IAS) does not lead to significant improvements in an organization’s social responsibility. When organizations espouse their commitment to IAS but do not put forth the effort necessary to operationally enact that commitment, a “credibility cover” is created that perpetuates business as usual. In other words, the legitimacy that organizations gain by formally adopting the standards may shield the organization from closer scrutiny, thus enabling rather than constraining the types of activities the standards were designed to discourage.There is a lack of research on why certain types of IAS are more prone than others to being decoupled from organizational practices. Applying a neo-institutional perspective to IAS, we theorize that the structural dimensions of the types of standards themselves can increase the likelihood of organizations adopting IAS standards in form but not in function.

Talking the Talk, Moral Entrapment, Creeping Commitment? Exploring Narrative Dynamics in Corporate Responsibility Standardization

“…In their view, low-entry barriers for adopting a CR standard and lax enforcement mechanisms and reporting requirements after adoption encourage shirking (King & Lenox, 2000). Consequently, researchers have started paying attention to whether organizations actually implement CR standards (Aravind & Christmann, 2011;Boiral, 2007) and examining the various antecedents and consequences of decoupling (Behnam & MacLean, 2011;Christmann & Taylor, 2006). Such research has found that CR standardization initiatives are often implemented superficially to produce a 'green' and socially responsible image that does not affect organizational core activities.…”

Corporate Responsibility as Myth and Ceremony: Bad, But Not for Good

“…Our paper's contribution is twofold. First, our study prompts the rethinking of decoupling and "greenwash" as detrimental to the institutionalization of CR as a global governance mechanism, as currently conceived in the mainstream CR literature (Aravind & Christmann, 2011;Behnam & MacLean, 2011;Delmas & Montes-Sancho, 2011). Second, we integrate institutional theory (Scott, 2008) and the path dependence concept (Sydow et al, 2009;Vergne & Durand, 2010) by adopting an explicit proccessual perspective which allows to temporally separate theoretical incompatibilities among transparentists and opacitists (see Okhuysen & Bonardi, 2011;Poole and van de Ven, 1989).…”

Complete and Partial Organizing for Corporate Social Responsibility

“…On the one hand, it allows for higher degrees of contextualization and flexibility, as the complier usually makes the final decision about how to fit the rules of the standard into the particular organizational context (Ahrne and Brunsson 2011). On the other hand, this flexibility can also be misused leading to accusations of standard adopters not walking their talk (Behnam and MacLean 2011).…”