Title: Shades of green: a critical assessment of greenwashing in social and environmental business performance reports

Authors: Joel Richard Thomas

Addresses: School of Management, University of Bath, Bath BA2 7AY, UK

Abstract: This paper explores the importance of corporate reporting, looking specifically at the presentation of social and environmental performance in annual reports. It argues that photography has commonly been employed in reports, oftentimes as a method of greenwashing. Many corporate reports contain ambiguous presentations of information, and photography is susceptible to both misinforming and disengaging the reader. It is difficult to discern the extent to which social and environmental reports are true depictions of efforts or achievements, as opposed to mere greenwashing. The plethora of reporting styles found in corporate reports has led to an obfuscated presentation of information. As such, there is increased need to implement a more rigorous approach to understanding the impact of these communications to ensure corporate performance can be understood by multiple stakeholders.

Keywords: greenwashing; visual research; social performance; environmental performance; communications; business performance reports; corporate reporting; annual reports; ambiguous information; photography.

DOI: 10.1504/JIBED.2014.063092

Journal for International Business and Entrepreneurship Development, 2014 Vol.7 No.3, pp.245 - 252

Published online: 29 Oct 2014 *

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