The practice of corporate sustainability is beset with compromise; it involves inevitable tensions across competing social, environmental, and economic objectives, across a wide range of divergent stakeholders and across time. The purpose of this study is to determine whether, and why, companies are reporting on tensions decisions in their sustainability reports. This study relies on a group of the largest companies in Canada and analyzes sustainability reports and interviews with sustainability managers. The study finds that 92% of all reporting companies in the sample had encountered sustainability tensions but had failed to disclose these discussions explicitly in their reports. Evidence of these accounts are nevertheless present in the implicit (or latent) content of the reports, surrounded by “legitimizing talk”—affirmations of the companies’ commitment to, and demonstration of sustainability principles. These findings highlight the negative light in which many companies perceive tensions (as “bad news”) and the potential legitimacy threat that their disclosure poses.

中文翻译：

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将潜在的“坏消息”合法化：公司如何在可持续发展报告中披露其紧张经历

企业可持续发展的实践充满妥协；它涉及相互竞争的社会、环境和经济目标、广泛的不同利益相关者和跨时间的不可避免的紧张关系。本研究的目的是确定公司是否以及为何在其可持续发展报告中报告紧张局势决定。这项研究依赖于加拿大最大的一组公司，分析了可持续发展报告和对可持续发展经理的采访。研究发现，样本中 92% 的报告公司都遇到了可持续性紧张局势，但未能在其报告中明确披露这些讨论。尽管如此，这些帐户的证据仍存在于报告的隐含（或潜在）内容中，被“合法化谈话”所包围——肯定公司对可持续发展原则的承诺和示范。这些调查结果凸显了许多公司认为紧张局势（作为“坏消息”）的负面影响，以及他们的披露构成的潜在合法性威胁。