Impression management, myth creation and fabrication in private social and environmental r

Description
This paper explores the nature of private social and environmental reporting (SER). From
interviews with UK institutional investors, we show that both investors and investees
employ Goffmanesque, staged impression management as a means of creating and dissem-
inatingadualmythofsocialandenvironmentalaccountability.Theinterviewees’utterances
unveil private meetings imbued with theatrical verbal and physical impression manage-
ment.Mostofthetime,theinvestors’sharedawarenessofrealitybelongstoaGoffmanesque
frame whereby they accept no intentionality, misrepresentation or fabrication, believing
insteadthat the‘performers’(investees) arenot intending to deceive them. A shared percep-
tion that social and environmental considerations are subordinated to financial issues ren-
ders private SER an empty encounter characterised as a relationship-building exercise with
seldom any impact on investment decision-making. Investors spoke of occasional instances
offabrication butthese wereinsufficient tobreakthe frameof dual mythcreation.They only
identified a handful of instances where intentional misrepresentation had been significant
enough to alter their reality and behaviour. Only in the most extreme cases of fabrication
andlyingdidthestagedmeetingbreakframeandbecomeagenuineoccasionofaccountabil-
ity, where investors demanded greater transparency, further meetings and at the extreme,
divested shares. We conclude that the frontstage, ritualistic impression management in pri-
vate SER is inconsistent with backstage activities within financial institutions where private
financialreportingisprioritised.

Impression management, myth creation and fabrication
in private social and environmental reporting: Insights
from Erving Goffman
Jill F. Solomon
a,?
, Aris Solomon
b
, Nathan L. Joseph
c
, Simon D. Norton
d
a
School of Business Informatics, Systems & Accounting, Henley Business School, Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire RG9 3AU, United Kingdom
b
Faculty of Business, Athabasca University, 1 University Drive, Athabasca, Alberta, Canada T9S 3A3
c
Finance, Accounting and Law Group, Aston Business School, Aston University Aston Triangle, Birmingham B4 7ET, United Kingdom
d
Cardiff Business School, Cardiff University, Aberconway Building, Colum Drive, Cardiff CF10 3EU, United Kingdom
a b s t r a c t
This paper explores the nature of private social and environmental reporting (SER). From
interviews with UK institutional investors, we show that both investors and investees
employ Goffmanesque, staged impression management as a means of creating and dissem-
inating a dual myth of social and environmental accountability. The interviewees’ utterances
unveil private meetings imbued with theatrical verbal and physical impression manage-
ment. Most of the time, the investors’ shared awareness of reality belongs to a Goffmanesque
frame whereby they accept no intentionality, misrepresentation or fabrication, believing
instead that the ‘performers’ (investees) are not intending to deceive them. A shared percep-
tion that social and environmental considerations are subordinated to ?nancial issues ren-
ders private SER an empty encounter characterised as a relationship-building exercise with
seldom any impact on investment decision-making. Investors spoke of occasional instances
of fabrication but these were insuf?cient to break the frame of dual myth creation. They only
identi?ed a handful of instances where intentional misrepresentation had been signi?cant
enough to alter their reality and behaviour. Only in the most extreme cases of fabrication
andlying did the staged meeting break frame and become a genuine occasion of accountabil-
ity, where investors demanded greater transparency, further meetings and at the extreme,
divested shares. We conclude that the frontstage, ritualistic impression management in pri-
vate SER is inconsistent with backstage activities within ?nancial institutions where private
?nancial reporting is prioritised. The investors appeared to be in a double bind whereby they
devoted resources to private SER but were simultaneously aware that these efforts may be at
best subordinated, at worst ignored, rendering private SER a predominantly cosmetic, thea-
trical and empty exercise.
Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Introduction
This paper contributes to the academic accounting liter-
ature in three ways: by extending research into impression
management from the public to the private reporting con-
text; by extending the analysis of private reporting to the
social and environmental context, and; by theorising pri-
vate social and environmental reporting (SER) using the
works of Erving Goffman. Recent years have witnessed a
signi?cant rise in private ?nancial reporting
1
since the
0361-3682/$ - see front matter Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.aos.2013.01.001
?
Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: [email protected] (J.F. Solomon),
[email protected] (A. Solomon), [email protected] (N.L. Joseph),
[email protected] (S.D. Norton).
1
We use the term ‘private ?nancial reporting’ to refer to face-to-face
meetings conducted between institutional investors and their investee
companies on ?nancial issues, also termed engagement and dialogue in
corporate governance practitioner reports (Cadbury Report, 1992; Hampel
Report, 1998; Walker Review, 2009).
Accounting, Organizations and Society 38 (2013) 195–213
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Cadbury Report and subsequent documents stressed the
need for greater institutional investor engagement with
investee companies (the Cadbury Report, 1992; Myners Re-
port, 1995; the Hampel Report, 1998; the Combined Code,
2010; the Walker Review, 2009; the Stewardship Code,
2010). Private SER
2
is voluntary,
3
having evolved in response
to calls for greater institutional shareholder accountability
in corporate governance (Walker Review, 2009; Solomon,
2010) and a growing recognition of the materiality of envi-
ronmental, social and governance (ESG) considerations for
institutional investment (Fresh?elds Bruckhaus Deringer,
2005). A need to extend corporate visibility and accountabil-
ity into the social and environmental domain is acknowl-
edged in the academic accounting literature (Roberts,
2001a, 2001b). Private SER represents a potentially powerful
mechanism for enhancing shareholder accountability.
Whether or not this potential is being realised is the subject
of this paper.
There is a small but substantial body of academic re-
search investigating private ?nancial reporting (Arnold &
Moizer, 1984; Chugh & Medor, 1984; Barker, 1998; Gaved,
1997; Holland, 1998a, 1998b; Holland & Doran, 1998; Mar-
ston, 1999; Marston, 2009). There is a smaller but growing
literature devoted to private SER (& Miles, 2001; Solomon
& Darby, 2005; Solomon & Solomon, 2006; Solomon, Solo-
mon, & Norton, 2002; Solomon, Solomon, Norton and Jo-
seph, 2011). One notion arising from this literature is the
concept of a dual myth created and disseminated between
companies and their institutional investors within the con-
text of private SER. From interviews with listed companies,
Solomon and Darby (2005) used a Freirian theoretical lens
to examine the development of private reporting on social,
ethical and environmental issues (i.e. private SER).
4
They
found that private SER was becoming an apparently dialogic
process but that the outcome of this process was uncertain.
Their ?ndings provided some early information on the evo-
lution of private SER, as interviewees indicated that both
companies and investors were bene?ting from the engage-
ment but that neither party was capturing power from the
other. Further, the paper suggested that private SER may
be demythologizing reality, destroying ‘mythologies’ (‘spin’)
perpetrated by hegemonic companies regarding social and
environmental issues. However, they also suggested that
this corporate ‘myth’, although dismantled in meetings,
was being replaced by a dual ‘win–win’, ‘green’ myth of so-
cial and environmental accountability, constructed jointly
by two groups with roughly equal power in society, in col-
laboration with each other. Their interviews supported this
outcome to some extent as both companies and institutional
investors were beginning to see the ?nancial bene?ts arising
from social and environmental reputation risk management
and from the ‘business case’, and appeared to be bene?ting
equally from the private dialogue. Nevertheless, private
SER seemed to be falling short of genuine dialogue as, from
a Freirian perspective, the ‘oppressed’ groups (less powerful
stakeholders) were being excluded from the process. Fur-
ther, Solomon and Darby (2005) were sceptical as to
whether private SER was transforming corporate behaviour,
as Freirian dialogical discourse should translate into action.
Apart from changes in public SER resulting from private
SER, they found no evidence of change in corporate behav-
iour. One interpretation of these earlier ?ndings was that
there was a lack of genuine commitment on both sides to
address ESG concerns seriously. The paper called for further
research to discover whether private SER could ful?l its dia-
logical potential by leading to genuine change in corporate/
investor practice. The notion of a dual myth as introduced in
this earlier paper remained hypothetical, did not suggest or
investigate elements of impression management and left an
opening for further research into the actual outcomes of pri-
vate SER, which we aim to explore in the current paper. Spe-
ci?cally, this paper investigates whether private SER is a
rather ‘empty encounter’, as the earlier research hinted, or
whether it is becoming an ef?cient mechanism of account-
ability. Although Solomon and Darby (2005) suggested that
private SER may involve dual myth creation and dissemina-
tion, they provided no evidence of the way in which this
myth was constructed. In this paper, we show that impres-
sion management, played out as a Goffmanesque staging,
is the technique/tool used by both investors and investees
to construct a dual myth of social and environmental
accountability within meetings.
A substantial growth in socially responsible investment
(SRI) has accompanied increasing concern among institu-
tional investors and their clients regarding the effect of
corporate activities on society and the environment (McC-
ann, Solomon, & Solomon, 2003; Solomon, 2009; Solomon,
Solomon, & Norton, 2002). Indeed, the operational activi-
ties of companies and how they are managed have at-
tracted substantial public interest. Further, poor social
and environmental corporate practices represent a mate-
rial ?duciary risk for investors, when companies become
the subject of lawsuits, negative media attention, loss of
reputation, ?nancial distress and even bankruptcy (Fresh-
?eld, 2005; Hildyard & Mansley, 2001; Mansley, 2000;
Monks, 2001). Given these risks, it is possible that execu-
tives manage impressions purveyed through privately
and publicly disclosed information, particularly on sensi-
tive ESG issues. It is also possible, although disappointing,
that Goffmanesque impression management within meet-
ings could render private reporting processes impotent and
empty: impression management could be the tool which
perpetuates a myth of accountability.
The study of private reporting is evolving as ?nance-
dominated paradigms are beginning to incorporate broad-
er sociological and behavioural perspectives (for example,
Roberts, Sanderson, Barker, & Hendry, 2006). We
2
We use the term ‘private social and environmental reporting (SER)’ to
refer to the process of engagement and dialogue on social and environ-
mental issues which takes place between institutional investors and
executives (directors/investor relations/senior managers) from their invest-
ee companies, and which represents an important mechanism for share-
holder advocacy in socially responsible investment (SRI).
3
Our focus is on non-regulatory social and environmental disclosure to
distinguish this from the regulatory environmental, social and employee
reporting that European companies are required to undertake to comply
with (say) the Business Review under the European Union Accounts
Modernisation Directive. The reporting context we consider relates to the
discussions in one-on-one meetings with institutional investors and not the
formal reporting associated with the published accounts in ?nancial
reporting.
4
Note that the theoretical framework used in this paper was derived
from the work of Paulo Freire’s (2004) Pedagogy of the Oppressed.
196 J.F. Solomon et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 38 (2013) 195–213
contribute to this emerging research agenda by applying
Goffman’s varied works on impression management and
interaction to the private SER context. Although there have
been a plethora of studies investigating impression man-
agement in published reports no research has focused on
impression management in private reporting or private
SER. Further there has been no attempt to interpret private
reporting in terms of a Goffmanesque narrative. Connected
to the notion of impression management we consider the
possibility of a dual myth being created in private SER, a
culmination of impression management activity by both
the investors and investees. Indeed, private SER provides
a potential opportunity for enhancing social and environ-
mental accountability. However, extensive impression
management could destroy this occasion of accountability
rendering it a weak or impotent accountability mecha-
nism. If private SER is solely about dual myth creation
and mutual impression management activity then the
opportunity for core shareholders to call corporations to
account for their social and environmental impacts is being
wasted. It is therefore of crucial importance to society as
well as to investors to establish through research whether
private SER has ‘teeth’ and enhances accountability or
whether it is simply a super?cial, myth-creating exercise.
As evidence of impression management would be con-
sistent with the concept of myth creation, we are therefore
interested in the extent to which private SER is character-
ised by Goffmanesque impression management. We use an
interpretive interview methodology to investigate the nat-
ure and process of private SER, and speci?cally the extent
to which private SER represents an effective mechanism
of enhancing corporate accountability to shareholders
(and ultimately diverse stakeholders). We focus on the
behavioural and sociological aspects of private SER. We
also revisit the notion of a dual myth of social and environ-
mental accountability in the context of the institutional
investors’ views of private SER.
5
The interview data are ana-
lysed with reference to Erving Goffman’s works on impres-
sion management, concealment, framing and interactive
ritual in order to respond to the following general research
questions: To what extent is private SER characterised by
impression management?; Does private SER involve con-
cealment/fabrication?; What are the consequences of
impression management and/or concealment on institu-
tional investor behaviour?; To what extent is private SER
actually acting as an effective mechanism of social and envi-
ronmental accountability? To what extent does private SER
involve the creation of a dual myth via Goffmanesque,
staged impression management?
The remaining sections of this paper are as follows. Inthe
next section, we provide a detailed account of Goffman’s
theoretical frameworks relating to impression manage-
ment. Sectionthree discusses the prior literature onimpres-
sion management in accounting and on private reporting.
Section four outlines our interpretive research method and
we present our ?ndings in section ?ve. The paper concludes
with a discussion in section six, identifying the theoretical
contribution of the paper in terms of extending Goffman’s
sociological theoretical frameworks and the empirical con-
tribution in terms of interpreting and reframing the context
of private SER as a Goffmanesque narrative.
Theoretical framework
Goffman sits as an individual in sociology who devoted
his life to microsociological analysis of social interaction.
6
Goffman’s analysis focuses on co-presence, focused and
unfocused interaction, with focused interaction being most
pertinent to the current study as it involves, ‘‘. . .individuals
directly attending to what each other are saying and doing
for a particular segment of time’’ (Giddens, 1987, p. 115).
Goffman developed his framework of impression manage-
ment and concealment throughout his sociological writings,
although they were initially distiled in, The Presentation of
Self in Everyday Life, (Goffman, 1959) where he explored
ways in which people present an image of how they think
their audience wishes to see them in face-to-face interac-
tion. For Goffman, impression management involves indi-
viduals using their ‘expressiveness’ to make ‘impressions’
on their ‘audience’, with the implication that the audience
will constantly seek to decode these expressions. The rich
information expressed is audited by the audience (Smith,
2006) and Goffman concerns himself with ‘fostering and dis-
ruption of impressions’ (Lo?and, 1980). In his writings,
‘‘. . .persons are seen as actors playing parts, giving more or
less convincing role performances, colluding with their fel-
low actors or acting on their own, using the available social
scenery to their expressive advantage, presenting characters
or social selves, and controlling their role performances in
such a way that the image they want to project and to be
known by is crystallized in the minds of those in their audi-
ence’’ (Miller, 1984, p. 142). A strong emotional driver of
Goffman’s impression management concept is embarrass-
ment, as individuals anticipate potential embarrassment
and present the front they believe their audience wishes to
see. They attempt to manage and avoid embarrassment
through impression management (Scheff, 2006).
7
Goffman’s (1959) dramaturgical metaphor involves two
elements: managing impressions by creating a ‘front’, and
concealment. Both elements highlight situations where
the impression presented may be inconsistent with the
underlying ‘reality’. Goffman (1959) does not restrict his
analysis to the theatrical setting but suggests that impres-
sion management is ubiquitous in all social interaction and
face-to-face meetings and is well-known for, ‘‘. . .his pic-
ture of how the con?dence man is not merely a pictur-
esque criminal, but is an aspect of all of us’’ (Collins,
5
As we are using Goffman’s theoretical frameworks of impression
management and framing to interpret our interview data (and not a
Freirian dialogics framework) the notion of dual myth creation between
investors and investees is a useful one but we interpret in a different light
from that used in Solomon and Darby (2005) as we develop the notion from
a Goffmanesque impression management perspective.
6
A range of books have discussed the works of Goffman (but not in the
speci?c context of accounting and ?nance) for example, Burns (1992), Drew
and Wootton (1988), Fine and Smith (2000), Manning (1980), Scheff (2006)
and Trevino (2003). Many have studied Goffman’s work as research into
face-to-face interaction and his relationship to other sociologists (Rawls,
1989).
7
Comments on our paper from Professor Tom Scheff, emeritus professor
at the University of California, Santa Barbara, encouraged us to explore this
important element of Goffman’s work.
J.F. Solomon et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 38 (2013) 195–213 197
1986, p. 107). Possible assumptions underlying Goffman’s
model of impression management and face-to-face inter-
action have been proposed which include: individuals pro-
viding information through talk but also ‘giving off’
expressive messages about themselves; individuals being
capable of monitoring others, taking the attitude of others
and controlling information about themselves (Smith,
1989). Goffman (1959) explains that people create a ‘front’,
the impression they wish to convey to their ‘audience’, by
controlling their expressiveness, maybe expressing misin-
formation and attempting to control how their ‘audience’
reacts to the impression expressed through their perfor-
mance. He also assumes that the audience has the ability
to audit or monitor the impression expressed to them. In
later writings, Goffman presents his theatrical framework
of impression management in a variety of guises. He read-
dresses the concept of front by discussing individuals’ rit-
ual behaviour during face-to-face contact whereby they
present a ‘face’, or a ‘line’,
‘‘The term face may be de?ned as the positive social
value a person effectively claims for himself by the line
others assume he has taken during a particular contact.
Face is an image of self delineated in terms of approved
social attributes – albeit an image that others may
share, as when a person makes a good showing for his
profession or religion by making a good showing for
himself’’ (Goffman, 1967, p. 5).
It is unclear whether Goffman perceived impression
management to involve deliberate ‘misrepresentation’,
with the ‘front stage’ persona differing signi?cantly from
the ‘back stage’ persona. Miller (1984) draws a distinction
between frontstage and backstage in Goffman’s dramatur-
gical metaphor. Alternately, did Goffman perceive discrep-
ancies between a person’s underlying ‘self’ and the self
portrayed to the audience to constitute an inevitable but
unintentional outcome of the performance? Often, ‘‘. . . the-
orists use self-presentation almost always as synonymous
with misrepresentation’’ (Tseëlon, 1992, p. 117; see also,
Baumeister, 1982, 1986; Tedeschi, 1981).
8
In the context
of private SER, the potential contrast between investors’
views and behaviours frontstage (in meetings) and back-
stage (outside meetings within the institution) is an impor-
tant issue which we explore in this paper.
Goffman (1974) developed further his notion of impres-
sion management in Frame Analysis. A frame is the context
within which interaction as understood by the participants
is set. Framing can be seen as selecting aspects of a ‘per-
ceived reality’ and making them more salient in a commu-
nicating text (Entman, 1993). Although frames may be
interpreted as external, embracing structural frameworks,
they are not necessarily ?xed and can be broken when dis-
crepancies arise between the frame and aspects of individ-
uals’ performance and impression management. Breaking
frame involves keying, de?ned as, ‘‘. . .a set of conventions
by which a given activity, one already meaningful in terms
of some primary framework, is transformed into some-
thing patterned on this activity but seen by the partici-
pants to be something quite else. The process of
transcription can be called keying. A rough musical anal-
ogy is intended’’ (Goffman, 1974, p. 44). The concept of
‘frame’, although de?ned in a less than clear manner
(Scheff, 2005), seems to encapsulate a ‘shared’ perception
of reality through ‘mutual awareness’. Further, the notion
that a ‘key’ can show the nature of a frame sheds light on
the way in which a ‘performance’ for the purposes of
impression management can suddenly change as a shared
perception because of the presence of a ‘key’. A key in-
volves mutual awareness, shared awareness and mutual
focus of attention. Framing (and keying) involve ‘‘. . . partic-
ipants in mutual recognition of shifts in alignment of self
and other’’ (Scheff, 2005, p. 374). The shift from one frame
to another involves an alteration in the perceptions of
‘reality’ among one or all of those involved in the face-to-
face interaction, ‘‘Goffman’s concern is exclusively with
the member’s sense of reality. . . he will act according to
the framing of the event until subsequent events prove
that frame inadequate or invalid. A frame, then, is an a pri-
ori de?nition of reality, within which certain constructions
of the situation. . . are taken for granted’’ (Frank, 1979, p.
176). Goffman illustrates a keying as a signal or trigger that
play?ghting has metamorphosed into real ?ghting.
Frame Analysis (Goffman, 1974) furthers the under-
standing of roles and performances ?rst outlined in the
Presentation of Self, ‘‘. . .the frequently suggestive appeals
to the authority and example of theatrical history,
throughout Frame Analysis, have a curiously retrospective
atmosphere . . . striking one ultimately as the research
notes from some immense and never completed thesis
on play-acting which was to have served as the philosoph-
ical basis for the older book on ‘roles’’’ (Jameson, 1976, p.
132). Although Frame Analysis is less personal in its analy-
sis than the Presentation of Self, there are clues throughout
the text which link it genetically to the earlier work, ‘‘. . .it
seems that we spend most our time not engaged in giving
information but in giving shows’’ (Goffman, 1974, p. 508).
Managing impressions and presenting a ‘front’ involves
more than verbal disclosure and includes physical appear-
ance, dress and demeanour, referred to as ‘body idiom,
9
‘‘The body is not simply an ‘adjunct’ to communication in
situations of co-presence; it is the anchor of the communica-
tive skills which can be transferred to disembodied types of
messages’’ (Giddens, 1987, p. 117). Indeed, impression man-
agement involves dramatic realisation including dramatur-
gical arts of impression management (Smith, 2006).
Corporate employees are known to perform to an ‘audience’
to whom they are accountable and are consequently in-
clined to display positive bias in their performance in the
context of face-to-face rather more than in written account-
ability situations,
10
implying that impression management
8
Indeed, Goffman’s impression management framework has been
criticised by some for depicting a negative view of social interaction
(O’Neill, 1972) whereas others have interpreted Goffmanesque self-pre-
sentation as innocent and unintentional (Schlenker, 1980, 1985; Schlenker
& Leary, 1982).
9
’’Body idiom is the shared vocabulary or ’conventional discourse’ that
enables us to make widely agreed sense about dress, physical gestures such
as nodding or waving, facial gestures and the like’’ (Smith, 2006, p.38).
10
’’When participants were required to justify ratings to ratees face-to-
face, as opposed to in writing, they recorded a greater proportion of positive
behaviours, were less accurate, and provided higher overall ratings’’ (Mero,
Guidice, & Brownlee, 2007, p.246).
198 J.F. Solomon et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 38 (2013) 195–213
may be more prevalent in private rather than public
reporting. However, following the self-promoter’s paradox
(Jones & Pitman, 1982), institutional investors may discount
transparent self-promotional behaviour when it is observed.
Face-to-face interaction has also been analysed in terms of
ritual in Goffman’s work Interaction Ritual, (Goffman, 1967)
which explores the many ways in which people stage their
performance in a whole range of encounters.
Another element of Goffman’s (1959) framework is con-
cealment, speci?cally ways in which, ‘‘. . .a performer tends
to conceal or underplay those activities, facts, and motives
which are incompatible with an idealised version of him-
self and his products. In addition, a performer often engen-
ders in his audience the belief that he is related to them in a
more ideal way than is always the case’’ (Goffman, 1959, p.
56, emphasis as original). Where Goffman accepts that
impression management may involve intentionality, then
concealment may arise. In ‘Presentation of Self’, he discusses
concealment explicitly, presenting a framework to de-
scribe the situation when impression management be-
comes intentional concealment.
11
As with interpreting
impressions, the ‘audience’ constantly monitors the perfor-
mance in a ‘game’ of ‘concealment and search’. Goffman’s
framework depicts several forms of concealment which
can arise when an individual presents an image whilst con-
cealing the ‘true’ pro?table activity actually pursued. A sec-
ond example of individuals’ tendency to conceal is where
they seek to conceal evidence that mistakes have been
made. This can also involve correcting errors before the ‘per-
formance’ and eliminating evidence that mistakes have been
corrected. A third case arises where only the end ‘polished’
product of a production process is revealed to the ‘audience’,
rather than the process leading to production. A fourth, re-
lated case of concealment entails evidence of ‘dirty work’,
such that evidence of activities which are unsavoury, un-
seemly, cruel, degrading or verging on criminal, are con-
cealed in performances, when the information delivered in
the performance would not exist without them. Linked to
this, further potential ‘discrepancy between appearance
and actual activity’ arises, as the performer may present
ideal standards whilst concealing the sacri?ce of other stan-
dards, in order to present a positive impression. Lastly, Goff-
man suggested that concealment takes place where the
performer demonstrates their credentials and worthy moti-
vations for their position, whether these are genuine or not,
‘‘. . . executives often project an air of competency and gen-
eral grasp of the situation, blinding themselves and others
to the fact that they hold their jobs partly because they look
like executives, not because they can work like execu-
tives. . .’’ (Goffman, 1959, p. 55). Individuals tend to ‘conceal’
their ‘true’ status, by donning ‘status symbols’ consistent
with a status they do not possess (Goffman, 1951). Conceal-
ment can have negative consequences for the performer,
‘‘When the audience is known to be secretly sceptical of
reality that is being impressed upon them, we have been
ready to appreciate their tendency to pounce on tri?ing
?aws as a sign that the whole show is false. . . even sympa-
thetic audiences can be momentarily disturbed, shocked,
and weakened in their faith by the discovery of a picayune
discrepancy in the impressions presented to them’’ (Goff-
man, 1959, pp. 59–60). Resonating with Goffman’s conceal-
ment framework in Presentation of Self, Frame Analysis
discusses fabrication
12
and the way in which fabrication
may be benign or exploitative.
Goffman explained that a performance may succeed in
‘taking in’ the audience and discussed this in terms of the
audience becoming engrossed (involved, absorbed)
13
in
an activity such that slight errors in the ‘performance’ or
impression presented may not be interpreted as a break in
the frame (or a collapse of the impression presented) but ac-
cepted as an unintentional element of the performance,
‘‘Involvement is a psychobiological process in which the
subject becomes at least partly unaware of the direction of
his feelings and his cognitive attention. That is what
engrossment means’’ (Goffman, 1974, p. 346). Thus, where
there may be intentional misrepresentation the performer
may sustain the ‘impression’ because the audience are en-
grossed in the performance and therefore unwilling to no-
tice elements of the performance which reveal the
performer as a fraud, ‘‘. . .some deviation from the norm is
tolerated. And if effective cover is maintained, a great deal
of deviation can be got away with. Indeed, that deviation
is an element in almost all fabrications’’ (Goffman, 1974, p.
347). We now turn to discussing the prior literature on
impression management and private reporting.
Impression management in accounting and private
reporting
Impression management in accounting
Inspired by Goffman’s work, there is a substantial liter-
ature on impression management and concealment in
?nancial reporting. Managers may use earnings’ manage-
ment, narratives, graphs and pictures/photographs to man-
age the impression they convey to users of published
?nancial reports (Beattie, Dhanani, & Jones, 2008).
14
Impression management can be used to conceal informa-
tion, through the manipulation of the information that is
conveyed. In published reports, ‘good news’ tends to have
higher readability for investors whilst ‘bad news’ may be
obfuscated (Adelberg, 1979; Clatworthy & Jones, 2001;
Courtis, 1998; Kohut & Sears, 1992; Subramanian, Insley, &
Blackwell, 1993). Managers tend to attribute positive organ-
isational outcomes to their own efforts and negative organ-
isational outcomes to uncontrollable factors (Bettman &
Weitz, 1983; Aerts, 2005). It is debatable at what point
impression management becomes fabrication/concealment
11
Goffman’s framework of concealment is expounded in chapter one of
Presentation of Self in Everyday Life on ‘Performances’.
12
Goffman (1974, p.83) de?nes fabrication as, ‘‘. . . the intentional effort of
one or more individuals to manage activity so that a party of one or more
others will be induced to have a false belief about what it is that is going
on’’.
13
‘‘During any spate of activity, participants will ordinarily not only
obtain a sense of what is going on but will also (in some degree) become
spontaneously engrossed, caught up, enthralled’’ (Goffman, 1959, p. 345).
14
There is a relatively large body of empirical work in this area. See for
example, Aerts (2005), Preston, Wright, and Young (1996), Beattie, McIn-
nes, and Fearnley (2004); and Beattie and Jones (1992), Beattie and Jones
(2002), Graves, Flesher, and Jordan (1996), Guillamon-Saorin (2006),
Mather, Mather, and Ramsay (2005) and McKinstry (1996).
J.F. Solomon et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 38 (2013) 195–213 199
and how investors react to these behaviours. Myopic share-
holder theory suggests that as institutional investors are
believed to focus exclusively on short term return, they di-
vest when ‘bad news’ is disclosed (Abrahamson & Rosen-
kopf, 1993; Graves, 1988; Hansen & Hill, 1991). However,
where there is a dominant investor, the reverse may occur,
as core institutional shareholders often hold large stakes in
companies rendering them unable to divest at whim.
15
Com-
panies with substantial institutional investor ownership are
thus more likely to suppress the disclosure of negative
organisational outcomes than those without but where
institutional investors’ holdings are concentrated the re-
verse is the case (Abrahamson & Park, 1994). Also, corporate
of?cers suppress information to avoid being assessed on
company results (Sutton & Callaghan, 1987). Executives
may deliberately conceal negative information about organ-
isational performance to avoid alarming shareholders
(Whetten, 1980).
Private reporting
Inadequacies in ?nancial reporting have been perceived
to encourage the development of private disclosure chan-
nels which supplement ?nancial reports (Holland, 1998a).
Models of private ?nancial reporting focus on cost/bene?t
analysis and constraints on private communications be-
tween companies and their shareholders
16
(Holland,
1998a, 1998b). Private ?nancial reporting has been explored
to gauge the extent to which one-on-one meetings shape
executive subjectivity by examining executive anxiety, prep-
aration preceding meetings, self-disciplinary effects and
‘careful construction of the corporate self’ (Roberts et al.,
2006, p. 286). Private ?nancial reporting renders executives
narcissistic and self-conscious. Indeed, private reporting
forces executives to focus on‘an image of what the self should
be: an image of the ful?lment of the executive self in the
approving gaze of the investor’’ (Roberts et al., 2006, p. 284),
and this may involve, ‘‘a time consuming investment in thea-
trical self-presentation’’ (Roberts et al., 2006, p. 284).
17
Although Roberts et al. (2006) allude to impression manage-
ment withintheir disciplinaryframework, this is not the focus
of their study. Private reporting represents an event where
executives are called to account by their shareholders, sug-
gesting that, ‘‘. . . accountability shapes identity, the way in
whichademandfor accountabilityis framedimpacts theindi-
vidual’s self-understandingas anaccountable subject’’ (Mess-
ner, 2009, p. 928).
18
Accountability through transparency
(written reports or one-on-one meetings) represents an indi-
vidualising process which involves ‘‘securing the self in
other’s eyes’’ (Roberts, 2009, p. 965).
Similarly, a market failure in the production of soft/
qualitative forms of information has been identi?ed in
the literature (Holland, 1998a, 1998b). Solomon and Solo-
mon (2006) found that institutional investors perceived
public SER to be inadequate and were developing private
SER as a means of supplementing publicly available social
and environmental information. Friedman and Miles
(2001) examined the emergence of SRI in the UK, indicat-
ing that social and environmental issues were starting to
be a consideration for mainstream investment institutions.
Solomon and Solomon (2006) showed that the process of
private SER was evolving quickly, moving from margin to
mainstream institutional investment and highlighted an
interplay between public and private SER, with a circular
process of information feedback passing between the
reporting contexts. As mentioned above, using a frame-
work arising from the concept of dialogic SER, Solomon
and Darby (2005) provided a number of possible scenarios
for private SER. These included a situation where the com-
pany provided information in meetings in a didactic, hege-
monic manner. However, the empirical evidence in the
paper supported a scenario where both institutional inves-
tor and investee company developed a ‘dual myth’ of envi-
ronmental accountability, based on a sharing of power.
This scenario emerged from the interviewdata as both par-
ties in private SER sought to establish and disseminate a
mutually created ‘green’ image or ‘myth’. Although the pa-
per implied some form of impression management this
was not explored in detail. Further, the notion of dual myth
was mentioned but not developed fully. Although
researchers have explored the extent of impression man-
agement in published reports, there has been no attempt
to focus on the extent of impression management in the
private reporting context. We therefore aim to contribute
to the literature by exploring the views of institutional
investors on the extent of impression management in pri-
vate SER and by developing further the possibility of a dual
myth, using a Goffmanesque narrative.
Research method and the context of private SER
The research process
We conducted interviews with 20 major UK institu-
tional investors throughout 2007 and 2008. Interviewees
were selected who held relatively senior positions in the
organisation as well as direct operational involvement in
private SER (see Table 1).
Fifteen of the interviewees had job titles that contained
words/phrases such as, sustainability, responsible invest-
ment and SRI. Their positions were relatively senior and
formed part of the formal organisational structure de-
signed to assist SRI management. The interviews were
semi-structured and comprised of a series of general re-
search questions with interviewees being asked to elabo-
rate on their answers, and encouraged to move onto
areas they felt were relevant. A summary of the overarch-
ing research questions was sent to the interviewees in ad-
vance so that they would have been unable to rehearse
answers to speci?c questions asked in the interviews. Each
15
This is known as modi?ed myopic investor theory, Abrahamson and
Park (1994).
16
A small, concentrated body of academic work has investigated private
?nancial reporting in these contexts, namely Holland (1998a, 1998b),
Holland and Doran (1998), Holland and Stoner (1996).
17
However, Roberts (2009) contradicts these earlier views by suggesting
that face-to-face meetings are less likely to result in impression manage-
ment than written reports, ‘‘It is typically a face-to-face encounter, rich
with information, in which communication is less easily stage-managed
and rhetoric can be constantly compared to actual practice’’ (Roberts, 2009,
p. 966).
18
This is explored in Roberts (1991), Schearer (2002) and Messner (2009).
200 J.F. Solomon et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 38 (2013) 195–213
interview was conducted by a lead interviewer and on oc-
casion one of the other researchers was present. Each
interview lasted about an hour and a half. The research
questions sought interviewees’ perceptions on: whether
they felt that companies managed impressions in meet-
ings, and if so, in what ways were such impressions man-
aged; whether they had experienced concealment in
meetings and the situations in which such concealment ar-
ose; and, what the potential consequences of impression
management and concealment could be, if detected. Ques-
tions were asked in an indirect manner, in order to avoid
biasing responses. After each interview was conducted,
memos were written, tapes of the interviews were tran-
scribed and the researchers discussed the ?ndings. New
evidence or new angles on the questions were then incor-
porated into the next set of interviews. We applied the
highest standards of research ethics to all our interviews.
19
The analysis of the interview data involved detailed reading
of the transcripts from each interview. This led to interpre-
tive, manual coding of the data which in turn led to the iden-
ti?cation of main themes for the purpose of the research. We
applied an interpretive approach to the information ob-
tained, uncovering levels of meaning from the rich, complex
conversations with investors. Our analysis allowed us to ex-
tract themes from our data which we then interpreted in the
light of Goffman’s works on impression management, front,
concealment and framing.
A poignant characteristic of all the interviews was that
the concept of concealment in private SER evolved more
clearly within the context of each interview. Indeed, it took
extensive questioning and probing to reveal the investors’
feelings regarding concealment as well as to uncover
memories and re?exive discussion of their experiences in
meetings. Some methodological literature recommends
the revisiting of issues at later stages of an interview, using
different vocabularies or altered framing in order to draw
out a deeper understanding of the subject. Our analysis
of the investors’ utterances recognises the opaque and rich
nature of interview utterances and the need to be self-
re?exive and open in interpreting our interviewees’ re-
sponses as well as the need to re?ect on the way responses
evolve throughout the interview process (Alvesson, 2003).
It seemed the investors had not re?ected on issues of con-
cealment before the interviews as their immediate re-
sponse was that investee companies never concealed
information. As they were led to re?ect on their experi-
ences throughout the interviews, they began to recall occa-
sional incidences where there may have been concealment.
There were many nuances in the interview dialogue, be-
tween these two extremes, which implied different per-
ceptions of what constitutes concealment. Inkeeping with
a Goffmanesque narrative we interpret our themes as fall-
ing under one of two ‘frames’, shared awareness of reality,
and discuss in what situation there is a shift in frame.
20
Our rationale for choosing Goffman’s work as a theoret-
ical frame of reference rests on a number of issues. Goff-
man’s (1971) Relations in Public suggests that face-to-face
interaction in chaired meetings (inter alia) has not been re-
searched adequately and his frameworks on impression
management, ritual and framing in interaction represent
an appropriate architecture for analysing private SER. Fur-
ther, the importance of Goffman’s framework of impres-
sion management to accounting as communication is
highlighted by researchers, for example, ‘‘social acting is
a category of expressive action the point of which is to al-
low for the communication of information on the part of
the actor to his audience’’ (Miller, 1984, p. 143). Goffman
analysed ‘concrete conversation,’ and, ‘‘. . .scrupulously
noted the social exchanges between individuals, not only
the words but also the tone, the accent, the body language,
the gestures, the withdrawals, the silences. . .’’ (Hacking,
2004, p. 278). Further, re?ecting on the nature of our re-
search as well as on the interview process per se, we do
not perceive our interviews as a means of unveiling the
institutional investors’ ‘reality’ but as a way of negotiating
through dialogue an image of their perceptions of impres-
sion management in private SER, acknowledging efforts in
the methodological literature to replace the straitjacket of
traditional, positivist interviewing, with a more re?exive
approach: institutional investors were encouraged to talk
at length about their own (shared) experiences. Our ap-
proach to interviewing recognises that ‘language cannot
really mirror reality’ and that an interview is, ‘‘. . .a socially,
linguistically and subjectively rich and complex situation’’
(Alvesson, 2003, p. 31). This approach allows us to
acknowledge the potential for our interviewees themselves
to manage impressions as Goffmanesque performers
within the interview situation and for them to potentially
present ‘a’ perception which they think we want to hear.
21
Table 1
Interviewee details.
Investment
institution
Interviewee’s title within the institution
1 Head of research on global sustainability
2 SRI engagement specialist
3 Co-head of responsible investment
4 SRI analyst
5 Sustainability research analyst
6 SRI specialist
7 Corporate governance manager
8 Head of governance and responsible
investment
9 Managing director
10 Manager, socially responsible investment unit
11 Director, head of governance and sustainable
investment
12 Engagement specialist
13 SRI manager
14 Director, UK charitable fund
15 Head of SRI engagement, responsible
shareholding
16 Head of SRI engagement
17 Senior corporate governance and SRI analyst
18 SRI specialist
19 Head of corporate governance and SRI
20 Engagement specialist
19
This includes ensuring con?dentiality in data storage and in dissem-
ination of the ?ndings, as well as high standards of etiquette in approaching
interviewees, data collection and debrie?ng.
20
These two frames may be interpreted as ‘rims’ or the overarching
frames which encapsulate sub-themes or lesser frames, using Goffman’s
(1974) analysis.
21
Tendencies for interviewees to manage impressions through moral
storytelling and promotional activity are discussed in Alvesson (2003).
J.F. Solomon et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 38 (2013) 195–213 201
A limitation of the research is that we only consider the
shared reality of investors involved in SRI engagement. Also,
we were asking questions about the frontstage, i.e. the con-
duct and content of the private meetings rather than about
the backstage attitudes towards private SER. Nevertheless,
analysing the interviewees’ utterances allowed us to glean
information regarding backstage processes and attitudes
within the investment institutions.
The private SER context
The structure of private SER appeared homogenous
amongst the institutional investors we interviewed, de-
spite their investment portfolios containing assets from di-
verse environments and industrial sectors. Their positions
were supported by other structures such as advisory
boards and research staff geared for SRI management.
Our interviews revealed that the frequency of private SER
varied, with meetings being held between once a year
and once every 2 years. The frequency of the meetings de-
pended on the importance institutional investors attrib-
uted to speci?c social and environmental issues, the
extent to which the particular issues were already in the
public domain, whether the issues were thematic, the size
of the shareholding, and the riskiness attributed to the
operational activities of investee companies.
‘‘In terms of governance and SRI, we would tend to
engage more with the high risk companies’’ (I7).
The investors indicated that generally private SER ran in
parallel with private ?nancial reporting such that the
meetings did not involve the same people and were held
at different times. The interviews focused on the content
and nature of the meetings devoted to social and environ-
mental issues.
Empirical ?ndings: insights from Erving Goffman
Inspired by Goffman’s work we treat private SER meet-
ings as Goffmanesque ‘strips of activity’ which can be ana-
lysed through interviews with the participants in order to
establish their perceptions of the shared reality within the
meetings. The discussion of our interpretive analysis falls
into the following sections: a dual myth of social and envi-
ronmental accountability; breaking frame: keying, fabrica-
tion and concealment.
A dual myth of social and environmental accountability?
The interviewees generally perceived companies man-
aged impressions in an innocent and non-manipulative
manner. This seemed to represent the creation of a dual
myth whereby companies and investors collaborated to
create an agreed impression of social and environmental
accountability which satis?ed them, a myth which gave a
pleasing view of actual practice but was disconnected from
the investment decision. Further analysis of their increas-
ingly re?exive discussion as interviews progressed indi-
cated that despite evident discrepancies in companies’
performance or the information disclosed, the investors
were unwilling to break frame and accept that there was
misrepresentation or fabrication. Where discrepancies
were detected, investors were not prepared to act on them
and change investment behaviour. They seemed engrossed
in the performance such that only blatant fabrication
would cause them to act. We interpret this situation as a
dual myth of social and environmental accountability, cre-
ated and perpetuated by the investors and the companies
through mutual disclosures. One possible explanation for
this is the investors’ (and probably the companies’) belief
that social and environmental issues are relatively unim-
portant and immaterial compared to ?nancial issues and
that private SER is subordinated to private ?nancial report-
ing. This could suggest that the institutional investors ?nd
themselves in a double bind such that they are committed
to engaging with investees on social and environmental is-
sues but are also aware that their investment institutions
perceive private SER as relatively insigni?cant to private
?nancial reporting. In other words, their activities ‘front-
stage’, in meetings, do not necessarily represent the ‘genu-
ine’ situation they ?nd themselves in ‘backstage’. Further
the meetings appear to be exercises in interaction ritual
with no impact on investment decision-making, making
the dual myth a frontstage play against a backstage back-
drop of ?nancial prioritisation.
‘Innocent’ impression management
Interviewees believe that in private SER companies
present an impression which is acceptable and ‘honest’,
managing impressions without intention to deceive or
manipulate, rather to give a good impression which ?ts
with the investees’ perceptions of their reality. At worst
the investors feel the performers emphasise good news,
‘‘. . .I think that it’s important for them to paint their
company in the best light really’’ (I15, emphasis added).
‘‘They want to present the best picture of their company
obviously and it’s their marketing pitch and they try
and gloss over areas which they’re not strong on . . . so
they’re trying to create a positive image’’ (I2, emphasis
added)
‘‘They put forward some things they think are good for
their image’’ (I12).
The company is acting as a ‘bricoleur’ constructing a
‘bricolage’ for the investor of verbal and visual images rep-
resenting a socially responsible version of themselves and
their organisation.
22
This frontstage scenery presented to
the investors is created through corporate impression man-
agement. The investors viewed impression management as
acceptable behaviour for their investees with many viewing
impression management as an innocent by-product of pro-
fessional performance.
‘‘They’re trying to put their company in a speci?c light,
that’s what they do, that’s what they’re meant to
do. . . Companies are there to send. . . an image to inves-
tors ‘‘ (I3)
22
Macintosh (2009) discusses the accountant’s role in this manner.
202 J.F. Solomon et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 38 (2013) 195–213
‘‘I think they try to show themselves off, of course, to best
advantage, that’s, I suppose, natural’’ (I11, emphasis
added).
Rather than taking a cynical view of the ‘performers’,
the investors interpret impression management as a
means of reassuring others of genuine motives rather than
of disguising insincerities (Giddens, 1987). The investors
also suggested that presenting a front was comparable to
impression management in other professional work, which
resonates with Goffman’s (1959) framework,
‘‘Everyone wants to show their best side, their strongest
suit, in any meeting. So you prepare, and if there are
things that you’re concerned about you should have a
good answer to them prepared in advance. I mean,
that’s what a lawyer would do going into a courtroom,
that’s what a doctor would do going into a meeting with
a patient who’s unwell’’ (I16, emphasis added).
This resonates with Goffman’s (1959) impression man-
agement framework where he suggests doctors to their pa-
tients, actors on a stage, teachers in classrooms and people
in all situations of interaction manage impressions in a
variety of ways. It also enhances the image of dual myth
creation with this role-playing environment. Goffman’s
interpretation of interaction as theatre was shared by the
investors’ perceptions of private SER,
‘‘. . .the [meetings] are theatre: in some senses a piece of
theatre ‘‘ (I10, emphasis added).
This resonates with evidence of theatrical rehearsing by
executives before ?nancial one-on-one meetings (Roberts
et al., 2006). There is consistency with the impression
management literature in accounting, where reports pro-
vide a pictorial setting or backdrop, as in a theatre, upon
which information may be printed, for example, ‘‘. . .photo-
graphs can be used to enliven an annual report and to ‘set
the scene’. They provide the background ‘mood music’
against which the report can be judged’’ (Jones, 2011, p.
97). Our interviewees suggested that similar activity oc-
curs in the private reporting context. A dual myth is being
created whereby both parties make each other feel com-
fortable and share a coordinated view of social and envi-
ronmental issues.
As the investors re?ected on their experiences they felt
that impressions portrayed in one-on-one meetings were
not necessarily consistent with ‘reality’,
‘‘ I think they give you a lot of the nice, soft cuddly stuff to
try and paint a picture which doesn’t necessarily ?t with
what the company actually does.’’ (I5, emphasis added).
Prior work suggests that those with power and in?u-
ence tend to enforce their own image of ‘reality’ on others
(Berger & Luckmann, 1966; Freire, 2004). Goffman (1959,
p. 221) suggests that if an impression presented is acciden-
tally found to differ from the impression fostered by the
performer, this represents ‘expressive treacherousness’.
The investors seem unperturbed. They did not generally
perceive intentionality in the misrepresentation. Discrep-
ancies were interpreted as part of the ‘game’, or dual myth
and thus had no impact on investment activity. As the
investors elaborated further on their views and experi-
ences, they generally felt that if there were misrepresenta-
tion or fabrication this was not intentional,
‘‘I don’t think they ever set out to deceive, I just think
that by telling a lot of good news stories, you can paint
a picture that doesn’t necessarily represent what the
core business is about. . . I think that when they come
and present to you there are probably things they’ll leave
out because they’d rather not discuss them, . . .but I don’t
think I’ve ever had anybody actually concealing’’ (I5,
emphasis added).
This comment resonates with Goffman’s concept of
impression management as, ‘‘. . .the over-communication
of some facts and the under-communication of others’’
(Goffman, 1959, p. 141). Companies would avoid disclosing
negative information, ‘‘. . .given the fragility and the re-
quired expressive coherence of the reality that is drama-
tized by a performance, there are usually facts which, if
attention is drawn to them during the performance, would
discredit, disrupt, or make useless the impression that the
performance fosters. These facts may be said to provide
‘destructive information’’’ (Goffman, 1959, p. 141). Rather
than actively monitoring the performance, the audience
appear to be accepting of the impressions presented.
Although the investors talked chie?y about impression
management by their investees they suggested that they,
too, managed impressions in private SER. It seemed from
some of our interviewees that being in a relatively power-
ful position they themselves had the potential to use their
power to be secretive with their investee companies. Our
interviewees suggested that they could conceal their moti-
vations for asking certain questions,
‘‘. . .fund managers sometimes can be quite cagey about
why they’re asking a question’’ (I2, emphasis added).
From a Goffmanesque viewpoint this represents con-
cealment of the performer’s motivations. This lack of trans-
parency on the investors’ side adds to impression
management by investees and contributes to the forma-
tion of a dual myth where both parties in meetings are
seeking to mould each other’s views and create an environ-
ment where everyone appears committed to social and
environmental accountability. Investors’ impression man-
agement seemed to be fuelled by anxiety, re?ecting Rob-
erts et al.’s (2006) ?ndings for companies,
‘‘We sometimes think it’s quite funny that they’re quite
nervous to have meetings with us and they should just
know how nervous we are (laughs)’’ (I4, emphasis
added).
Anxiety led them to rehearse as a means of managing
impressions frontstage. The fear of embarrassment (Scheff,
2006) caused the investors to provide an image re?ecting
how they believed the companies perceived them in their
role. Indeed, the investors felt preparation was important
to preserve the impression of themselves they portrayed
to their investee companies as knowledgeable, sophisti-
cated, professional investors,
J.F. Solomon et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 38 (2013) 195–213 203
‘‘We do a lot of preparation because obviously we invest
in a lot of companies and then to have one-on-ones, we
want to come across as credible and knowledgeable about
the company. It’s very clear in a meeting - you from
them how much they know and them from you how
much you know’’ (I13, emphasis added).
Again this reinforces earlier ?ndings of rehearsal by
investee companies (Roberts et al., 2006) but contributes
to the literature by showing similar behaviour by institu-
tional investors. In one case, there was evidence of genuine
rehearsal by investors, as opposed to preparation,
‘‘. . .if we have an important presentation to give then
it’s rehearsed. . . [we] just do it in front of a colleague, pre-
pare questions, in some instances you might do it in
front of a camera’’ (I19, emphasis added).
Our ?ndings provide evidence of impression manage-
ment and theatrical behaviour by investors as well as by
investee companies which has not been shown from prior
research and paves the way for further investigation into
shareholder behaviour in the context of private meetings.
It further enhances our image of a dual myth created, a
myth of social and environmental accountability which is
formed mutually by both parties in private SER, as part of
the myth involves the investors trying to appear up to
speed on social and environmental concerns when perhaps
they are not. Overall, the efforts by both the investors and
their investees to manage impressions lead to a dual myth
being formed frontstage in one-on-one meetings which
may or may not coincide with backstage attitudes and
practice.
Engrossment and unwillingness to ‘break frame’
As well as investors perceiving impression management
as innocent with any discrepancy accidental, they also
seem engrossed in the performance, thus unwilling to
delve deeper than the front presented to them,
‘‘I would suggest invariably they’re obviously trying to
paint a positive picture of the company. . . if they tell us
something we typically take a lot of it at face value
unless we have strong reason to doubt them’’ (I19,
emphasis added).
‘‘You want to on the whole give companies the bene?t
of the doubt. So we go into the meeting seeking for them
to be honest’’ (I13, emphasis added).
A Goffmanesque interpretation of the investors’ reac-
tions to possible concealment is that they are ensconced
in a Goffmanesque ‘frame’ imbued with myth creation
and impression management. Despite discrepancies be-
tween the performance and ‘facts’, they give companies
the bene?t of the doubt, ‘‘A wife who wants to believe
her husband’s claim that he loves her may ignore or misin-
terpret turns and behaviours that give the lie to his state-
ment’’ (Scheff, 2005, p. 376). According to Goffman
(1959), concealment may not always be intentional since
some people express themselves believing in their own
sincerity, whilst others intend to deceive. Prior literature
has failed to show intentionality in concealment (Staw,
Mckechnie, & Puffer, 1983). However some researchers
suggest that people unintentionally conceal negative
‘truths’ from themselves and consequently from share-
holders (Abrahamson & Park, 2004). Further people tend,
psychologically, to avoid uncovering information that
damages positive impressions of themselves (Zaskind &
Costello, 1962).
As the interviews unfolded, investors’ re?exivity led to a
self-questioning realisation that avoiding a response to
questions could be interpreted as concealment. The inves-
tors became increasingly confused as to what actually con-
stituted concealment and their shared perception was
uncertainty as to whether concealment took place in pri-
vate SER,
‘‘De?ne conceal. They may not talk about something or
they may choose not to answer a question or say that,
‘we can’t give you that information’, or whatever. Is that
concealment? We don’t think anyone’s been openly dis-
honest with us. But not answering a question or not vol-
unteering information is that concealment?’’ (I3,
emphasis added).
‘‘. . .we had found a bunch of problems with one of their
subsidiaries in South America and there were a number
of recalls and it was particularly bad in terms of what
they were ?nding in terms of the [product]. . . I brought
that to their attention and it was a ?at denial. Is that
concealing information? It could have been that they
honestly didn’t know but I don’t know’’ (I18, emphasis
added).
This confusion and discomfort may indicate stress (even
distress) when faced with the potential collapse of the
investors’ shared awareness of reality, threat to the ‘frame’
of innocent impression management and the dual myth of
‘toothless’ social and environmental accountability. They
recalled instances of possible concealment from their
experiences as their image of innocent impression man-
agement crumbled at the edges,
‘‘There have been a couple of meetings where questions
have been completely avoided and it has been a
rehearsed response’’ (I2)
‘‘. . .companies will sometimes not answer questions or
give you an answer to a different question and avoid
answering. But again it’s not unusual – their job is to
sell the company’’ (I3).
Avoiding issues was often achieved by investee compa-
nies over-emphasising what they were most interested in,
activities they were proud of, or good at. This allowed them
to avoid discussing negative outcomes as suggested by
Adelberg (1979), Clatworthy and Jones (2001), Courtis
(1998) and Goffman (1959),
‘‘. . .companies have got things that they want to get
across and that’s the point that they’ll keep coming back
to, so sometimes companies don’t answer the questions
we ask or they sound like they’ve answered it and they
haven’t’’ (I13, emphasis added).
204 J.F. Solomon et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 38 (2013) 195–213
The interviewees provided many descriptions of execu-
tives’ tendency to overemphasise events or activities they
were proud of and avoid discussing activities leading to
poor outcomes,
‘‘There are plenty of examples where companies just
don’t want to talk, so it doesn’t get to the stage where
you think they’re concealing something because you
can’t even enter into dialogue.’’ (I15, emphasis added).
‘‘There was another time. . . I came away thinking, ‘that
is so bogus’. . . just recently on the news they had some
problem on their board level and it had hit the press
and I had seen them right before I had heard and they
said nothing so I felt that after I came away that that
was concealment – maybe they didn’t know. I try to give
people the bene?t of the doubt’’ (I18, emphasis added).
23
Giving the companies the bene?t of the doubt again
suggests engrossment in the performance and a distinct
unwillingness to break frame or allow their frontstage dual
myth to collapse. Although, again in the above comment
there is no suggestion that such investee behaviour alters
the investors’ behaviours. Instead, our interviewees re-
mained con?dent in the sincerity of their investees,
‘‘. . .not actually concealed but maybe not volunteered I
think because concealment implies a bit of intent.
Whether they might have chosen to deliberately misun-
derstand you maybe or not answer your questions in
terms of focusing on what they do – but it’s not neces-
sarily that they want to conceal wrongdoing I don’t think,
it’s just that they don’t want to answer the question
maybe’’ (I13, emphasis added).
Intentionality is not accepted. The companies are,
understandably from the investors’ perspective, simply
seeking to present the best ‘front’ possible in the frontstage
of the meetings. Goffmanesque insights may be elaborated
through deeper consideration of concepts of concealment.
Concealment may be understood as concealing truth, and
concealment of truth may be viewed as blatant lying. There
are also gradations between concealment and lies.
Even when the investors mentioned situations where
they felt they had been misled they did not appear unduly
concerned. Despite discrepancies, or ‘destructive informa-
tion’ being revealed in the performance they were en-
grossed in the impressions and myth. Concealment
appeared to occur where companies were engaged in
activities that were likely to have adverse impacts on soci-
ety and the environment. Examples of such activities in-
cluded oil exploration, mining and transport, and even
some apparently environmentally friendly activities. In
all cases, the activities of such companies were likely to
pose a reputation risk. There were many allusions to com-
panies’ tendency to avoid sensitive areas. These situations
were more common when companies were engaged in pol-
luting activities, activities which had negative environ-
mental impacts, or even the ethos of the company’s
business,
‘‘. . .I met [company] and we spent the entire time talk-
ing about investments they’re making in renewable
energy and that was very interesting, but at no time
did we really discuss the money they’re spending in oil
sands which will probably totally negate any emission
bene?ts they derive from investing in solar power’’
(I5, emphasis added).
Where the investor was clearly aware of a company’s
attempt to avoid discussing serious environmental issues,
they seem to be accepting of the performance and did
not appear to pursue the issue. The oil sands illustration
is reminiscent of Goffman’s (1959) ‘dirty work’ form of
concealment. Again this could be a case of engrossment.
Or an acceptance that whatever happens in the meeting
it would not lead to any change in investment decision.
Again, this interviewee’s discussion suggested that
although the investors were aware of signi?cant environ-
mental reputational issues relating to a company’s activity
they seemed disinclined to pursue it with the company.
This unwillingness to follow up on issues frontstage could
indicate a double-bind, or decoupling, as it reveals a dis-
connect with the backstage institutional investment envi-
ronment. If backstage, investors know that social and
environmental issues are not considered a priority and that
they are expected to engage in private SER more as a ritu-
alistic myth-building exercise in camaraderie then they
would not be expected to follow up discrepancies in corpo-
rate tales. Indeed, such decoupling of backstage and front-
stage could explain why private SER may not be grasping
the nettle of social and environmental accountability.
The investors simply did not want to believe that inves-
tees were being dishonest in their performance,
‘‘They wouldn’t try and hide anything!’’ (I2).
From a Goffmanesque perspective, all social situations
involve performers succeeding (or not) in engendering
trust among their audience as, ‘‘. . .the social world always
involves the production of performances. These perfor-
mances, for example, lying or truth-telling . . . present the
same problem with regard to displaying a performance.
Each demands the successful display of conduct judged
by an audience to be a credible performance’’ (Manning,
1980, p. 256). If this credibility is lost, the audience may,
as Goffman suggested, begin to doubt the whole perfor-
mance. As one interviewee elucidated,
‘‘. . .one of the questions that came out was, ‘well, at the
moment there’s a lot of contrary information about the
build up in the environment from contraceptive pills as
well as antibiotics’, and his answer was, ‘well actually
we don’t produce those so according to our measure-
ments it’s ?ne’’. And that to me came across really badly
because he. . . was only telling half the story and in a
way it is an issue. . . if he had been open and upfront to
investors in the ?rst place and said that this is an issue that
23
It is surprising that executives conceal negative outcomes in these
meetings, if we take account of modi?ed myopic investor theory
(Abrahamson & Park, 1994) as disclosures of ‘bad news’ to core institutional
investors would, according to this theory, be unlikely to result in
divestment as in the context of private meetings investors are not allowed
to ‘act’ on information which could be price sensitive and therefore
divestment is even less likely to be the case. Maybe the companies are
concerned about the impact on their investors’ long-term investment
decision in these meetings?
J.F. Solomon et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 38 (2013) 195–213 205
potentially is going to be even bigger going for-
ward. . . that’s much more helpful to investors than say-
ing, ‘no, we don’t think it’s an issue’’’’’ (I6, emphasis
added).
This company’s misrepresentation displeased investors
but did not appear to alter their behaviour. The lapse in
the frontstage performance in this case was not suf?cient
to break the dual myth created in the meeting: a myth
which shirks genuine accountability.
Subordination of private SER to private ?nancial reporting
As well as engrossment, another explanation for the
investors’ unwillingness to accept intentionality or misrep-
resentation was their shared perception that private SER is
unimportant compared with meetings on purely ‘?nancial’
issues. In other words, they ‘know’ that the separate one-
on-ones in which they are involved which focus on social
and environmental concerns are a ritual, a dual myth of so-
cial and environmental accountability which has no in?u-
ence on investment decision-making,
‘‘Some IR [investor relations] people literally sit back,
you can tell everything from their body language, you
know, they put their feet up, sit back, etc. - they just want
to get onto a ?nancials meeting ‘‘ (I2, emphasis added).
This prioritisation of ?nancial concerns has been found
in private climate change reporting (Solomon, Solomon, Jo-
seph, & Norton, 2011) and also in stakeholder engagement
processes (Archel, Husillos, & Spence, 2011). In Goffman-
esque terms perhaps these meetings involve performance
in an ‘empty theatre’, since both investors and investees
are only concerned about the performance in the theatre
‘next door’ which is where the money is being made.
24
If
this is the case then the only obvious value of private SER
lies in allowing the investor to call themselves ‘responsible’
investors and disseminate the ‘green’ myth they have con-
structed with their investees. The backstage story may be
of institutions with no genuine interest in corporate social
and environmental impacts and only a cosmetic concern in
nurturing and maintaining a frontstage myth.
The investors’ reminiscences also included Goffman-
esque body idiom including dress, demeanour and body
language as contributing to companies’ impression man-
agement activities. Goffman’s portrayal of ‘front’ incorpo-
rates both verbal disclosures and body idiom, ‘‘. . .the
embrace of shareholder value is not simply discursive for
it also involves the careful cultivation of looks and gestures
and interpersonal ‘chemistry’’’ (Roberts et al., 2006, p. 284).
The bricolage of verbal as well as visual impressions por-
trayed in the meetings reinforced the relatively low impor-
tance assigned to private SER by investees,
‘‘. . .when more companies. . . began to engage the
investment community, there was this silly phase where
you’d get the directors coming forward with no ties and
trying to be very casual and it was kind of quite annoying
to a degree (both laugh) – and ditto for the language’’
(I15, emphasis added).
The manipulation not only of verbal disclosures in pri-
vate SER but also of body idiom resonates with extant re-
search on impression management in published reports:
companies manipulate graphs and other visual communi-
cative devices in public reporting just as investees manip-
ulate their appearance and body language for investors in
private SER. These different forms of visual impression
management are similar in intent and outcome. The inves-
tors perceived investees as chameleons who altered their
skins in different environments,
‘‘I think they [executives] are slightly schizophrenic –
depending on who they speak to. . . they will oftentimes
not discuss sustainability issues at all in investor meet-
ings unless prompted by an investor’’ (I5).
Interactive ritual and relationship building
Meetings could be benign with both parties choosing to
discuss relatively insigni?cant social and environmental
factors rather than more salient sustainability issues, thus
failing to take advantage of occasions of social and envi-
ronmental accountability,
‘‘. . .I met with [company] who make and create power
through burning coal and we spoke about all the ways
that they are retro ?tting existing installations to make
them cleaner. We spoke about. . . their investment into
carbon capture and storage. We spoke about all these
‘good’ things but the big elephant in the room is the fact
that they are implicitly a coal burning company and
that is never going to be a good environmental story’’
(I5, emphasis added).
Avoidance of the ‘elephant in the room’ may be ex-
plained by the investors’ perception that these meetings
have no ‘teeth’ and have no material effect on investment
decision-making. Further, it could suggest that neither
the investors nor their investees genuinely care about the
environment but are rather conducting private SER to
‘look’ as though they are engaging and as a relationship-
building and dual myth creation exercise. The super?cial-
ity of these discussions emerged from the interviews,
‘‘. . .he [company representative] was interested in rais-
ing investment for solar panels and he came to me and
said, we like to market ourselves as a socially responsi-
ble and environmentally friendly company. he was
sourcing solar panels from China and I said, ‘well can
you tell me what the actual environmental cost of pro-
ducing those solar panels in China is and can you tell me
what the conditions of employment are in the factories
which are producing them’. He said, ‘it doesn’t matter,
we’re just getting them as cheap as we can’ ’’ (I9, empha-
sis added).
Despite detecting a blatantly socially irresponsible atti-
tude the investors appear unperturbed. They did not sug-
gest in their discussion that this unethical approach led
them to change their behaviour in any way. Rather this
24
We thank one of our anonymous reviewers for bringing out this nuance
from the interview data and for continuing the dramaturgical metaphor
into the ?ndings in this way.
206 J.F. Solomon et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 38 (2013) 195–213
dialogue suggests that the meetings are merely Goffman-
esque interactive rituals providing an impression of genu-
ine engagement between companies and investors on
social and environmental issues. Again, in this scenario,
the investor is losing the opportunity to enhance corporate
accountability for society and the environment is failing to
call the investee to account for their actions. Although
investors felt uncomfortable about companies’ impressions
at times, they did not seem to act on discrepancies, again,
‘‘So this company which I met with, I didn’t get to the
bottom of it and they just weren’t giving me the
answers that I wanted, and it turned out that they were
making more [political] donations through perks - and
they shouldn’t have been’’ (I15).
Perhaps the investors’ acceptance of concealment as
part of the ritual/game is consistent with their own at-
tempt to conceal (in the interviews) their acceptance that
the meetings are super?cial, with little or no impact on
the investment decision and that they know they are play-
ing a game of mutual performance and dual myth crea-
tion?
25
Some of our interviewees also suggested their
investee companies had attempted to conceal mistakes that
had been made within subsidiaries.
‘‘When [company] had their [industrial accident] last
year. . . soon after I was asking them about it they said
the [accident] was really small. I can’t remember the
exact ?gures that they gave out but it ended up being
an absolutely humungous bill. . . but when I spoke to
[company] about it, it was only quite soon after it had
happened and perhaps they were still trying to ?nd
out how bad it really was. I don’t know if they purpose-
fully lied to me in the meeting or whether they were still
looking into themselves’’ (I6, emphasis added).
Again, there seemed to be no consequence in this case
to the investees’ lack of transparency. The investor seemed
to think the company may have misrepresented facts but
did not appear to take it any further. This evidence is con-
sistent with earlier literature suggesting that companies in
crisis situations have been found to conceal negative
organisational outcomes (Argenti, 1986; Sutton & Calla-
ghan, 1987). It also re?ects Goffman’s framework on con-
cealment where he explains that performers conceal so
as to hide errors. Again, although the investor perceived
they may have been duped and misled he does not suggest
there were repercussions on behaviour/investment deci-
sion. Perhaps the investors really did not know (or even
care) whether they were being misled and preferred to ac-
cept their investees’ word at face value as this helped them
to maintain a close relationship and perpetuated the ritu-
alistic dual myth.
26
Indeed, these and other comments sug-
gest that neither the investees nor the investors really
appear to understand environmental risks and their conse-
quences for companies, for their shareholders and ulti-
mately for stakeholders and society as a whole.
Often investors felt the ‘performers’ represented them-
selves as more skilled and knowledgeable than they were,
again resonating with one of Goffman’s forms of
concealment,
‘‘. . . sometimes I would say there are some who, the CEO
or the FD, are not as on top of the issues and they, I think,
ought to be, and so they’ve kind of read the blurb that
the sustainability manager wrote for them to sign in
the CSR report and that’s about as far as they know,
and they will say a couple of platitudes along the lines
of, ‘Oh, we take this very seriously’, ‘I’m very glad you
asked’ (I11, emphasis added).
‘‘I think generally they want to portray themselves as
knowing about what you’ve talked about and presenting
themselves as people who have to almost wrestle with
the issues’’ (I20, emphasis added).
In Goffmanesque terms this is typical of impression
management where the performer in interaction leads
the audience to see them in the best light, even if this
may exaggerate the ‘true’ nature of the performer. It is also
consistent with the investors’ own attempts to appear pro-
fessional and manage impressions of themselves as we saw
earlier. It shows that the investors perceive impression
management as generally innocent, reasonable and totally
predictable within the context of private SER. In connec-
tion with this ritualistic view of private SER, the investors
perceived the meetings as a relationship building exercise
rather than a process impinging on investment decisions,
‘‘. . . the reason why we [hold meetings] is because we
want to ?rst of all establish some kind of dialogue with
the companies that we invest in or have particular con-
cerns with, and also be in a position where we can raise
certain issues with them, so that over a period of time we
can try and change them or try to communicate with
them what the issues are from an investor perspec-
tive. . .’’ (I2).
This comment suggests that these meetings provide a
space for the creation of a dual myth of social and environ-
mental accountability: a shared perception/awareness of
reality regarding social and environmental issues rather
than a mechanism of accountability: an opportunity of
co-presence for the exchange of shared experience and cre-
ation of dialogue. This suggests, in Goffmanesque terms,
that both the investor and investee approach the meetings
from the same ‘footing’ where footings have been de?ned
as the, ‘‘. . .presuppositions held in common by persons en-
gaged in dialogue (Scheff, 2006, p. 30). Consequently, the
investors may consider their relationship with senior
directors within their investee companies as intimate and
‘‘special’’ and therefore shy away from enforcing full trans-
parency and ‘truth’. The investors’ ‘zone of indifference’
whereby private SER has no impact on investment deci-
sion-making may have a perceived moral value and could
thus be a conscious decision to maintain amicable, close
relationships with investees. If the investors were too
insistent on transparency they could break the ‘rules of
the game’, losing this ‘special relationship’. Indeed, private
SER may be perceived by investors as a space where
25
We are grateful to one of the anonymous reviewers for raising this
point.
26
Again we are grateful to one of the anonymous reviewers for bringing
in this perspective of ignorance on the part of the investors.
J.F. Solomon et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 38 (2013) 195–213 207
investees are highly exposed and therefore are granted
greater opacity by their investors to avoid breaking with
this intimacy (and losing their preferred access) (see also
Messner, 2009).
27
The dual myth created in private SER falls
far short of enhancing social and environmental account-
ability because of investors’ efforts to nurture and maintain
a close relationship with their investees.
Breaking frame: keying, fabrication and concealment
In Goffman’s terms ‘breaking frame’ occurs when there
is a keying, an indication that shared perceptions of reality
do not ?t the situation. An example of this keying may be
discovery of a blatant lie by the investors. Goffman (1974)
explained that a trigger indicating the transformation of
play ?ghting to ‘real’ ?ghting would represent a keying,
as in this case discovery of a blatant lie shifts private SER
from being a playful ritual of myth creation into a genuine
accountability mechanism in?uencing investment
decision-making.
‘‘I’ve had it with a very large [sector] company that
they’ve said one thing and it’s later turned out to be
famously not true. . . There have been other companies
that have claimed, ‘it’s on our website’, and you know
for a fact that it isn’t. They immediately go and put it
on their website following the meeting. There is a tool
out there on the internet where it downloads the inter-
net at a point in time and so changing a company’s web-
site and pretending it’s been there for years, you can see
it by looking at that resource and I’ve caught companies
out doing that a few times’’ (I16, emphasis added).
This illustrates a signi?cant rift between the frontstage
corporate performance and the company’s backstage activ-
ities. Despite the encumbent frame of dual myth creation
whereby investors are unwilling to accept fabrication there
was some indication that the frame could be (at least) sha-
ken to such an extent that the investors’ perceptions of
reality would shift to a shared awareness of companies’
deliberate attempt to misrepresent and fabricate in meet-
ings. This second ‘frame’ suggests a shift in perceptions
from accepting innocent impression management to
detecting manipulative concealment and fabrication.
There was a strong emotional response from some of
our interviewees at the thought of being misled. This sug-
gests a loss of trust and con?dence associated with feelings
of personal betrayal. This feeling of betrayal may be linked
to the impression gained in the interviews that private SER
was more about building and maintaining an intimate rela-
tionship with investees than about informing the invest-
ment decision. Such strong emotions suggest the
dif?culty for the investors of accepting intentionality in
the companies’ impression management and the embed-
ded unwillingness to change their perceptions of the func-
tion of private SER. Engrossment and a desire to play a
game of ritualistic private SER prevents investors from
shifting frame,
‘‘We would be very, very upset with the company [if we
believed they had lied] . . . we can’t just sell it [stock]
because we’re upset with them . . . if we’re really, really
upset we’ll call the company chairman in . . .to explain
why we’ve been given duff information’’ (I3, emphasis
added).
When the investor really begins to feel they have been
‘duped’ then this may ‘tip the balance’ as they have to ac-
cept their perceptions of reality where the investees are
entirely honest in their innocent impression management
may not be consistent with the performance presented.
This emotional response of being ‘very, very upset’ could
represent a reaction to their ontological security being
shattered or at least threatened. The interviewees are
starting to question whether their sense of reality, their
shared awareness and perceptions, are in fact wrong. The
dual myth collapses as the image the companies want is
suddenly too far from their own. Thus, the dual myth
which has to build on mutual engagement and compro-
mise between both parties collapses. It also shows a
change in investor behaviour: they ask more questions at
senior level. However it is curious that the interviewee
says they ‘can’t just sell’ the shares because they are upset.
Perhaps this is because of the investors’ commitment to
continuing a friendly, ritualistic dialogue thereby avoiding
divesting even in such cases of deception. Such ritual sup-
ports the notion of a dual myth of social and environmen-
tal accountability being played out frontstage whereas
backstage these matters are less relevant: the aim of pri-
vate SER being to create a dual myth which also bonds
the investors to their investees.
Indeed, in cases where they perceived intentional fabri-
cation, the investors listed various courses of action which
they would take if their perceptions shifted to intentional
fabrication and concealment,
‘‘We’ve got two ways of dealing with this [concealment].
If we don’t trust the management we could sell the com-
pany. . . or we can engage with them to say, ‘we think that
this changeable issue, if it is changeable, we aren’t con-
vinced by your argument’. We want to deal with that
and then only sell them if they don’t. So those are two
[ways]. The third group is an EGM or an AGM special
resolution suggesting other board directors. . . we’ve
voted against the re-election of directors on questions
of business ethics before’’ (I16, emphasis added).
Again, in this extreme case, the frame of myth and ritual
shatters and investor behaviour changes. This resonates
with Goffman’s framework of concealment where the
audience loses faith in the performer, detecting conceal-
ment. The investors then require greater transparency,
‘‘. . .If we were invested in it [company], it would mean a
lot of hard conversations with them about why the
disclosure is so poor and we’d want to know what those
statistics were’’ (I10).
Ironically, if companies reduce transparency by
concealing information in private SER, the potential
27
We are grateful to one of our anonymous reviewers for raising this
important possibility regarding the apparent ‘zone of indifference’ and
investors’ desire to maintain a special, cosy relationship with their
investees.
208 J.F. Solomon et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 38 (2013) 195–213
consequence, if discovered, is that their investors will de-
mand greater transparency. It is possible that only when
investors break frame and begin to engage in ‘hard conver-
sations’ do the investees begin to increase their transpar-
ency and reduce their level of impression management as
the play?ghting turns into a genuine battle of wills. In this
situation, backstage intentions to keep private SER soft and
cosmetic are over-ruled by investors’ indignation and de-
sire to ?nally grasp this opportunity for enhancing
accountability.
In terms of a keying, the interviewees felt that if infor-
mation suggesting serious concealment became evident
this would transform private SER such that investment
decision-making would be affected,
‘‘I think if they were concealing information that would
be a real deal breaker’’ (I1).
‘‘(laughs) We would be very worried about that [con-
cealment] de?nitely. We would try and get out. But obvi-
ously we would hope that companies wouldn’t lie to us
as investor companies, because usually we can ?nd it
out very quickly’’ (I13, emphasis added).
Interestingly, the incidence of laughter here may imply
an initial sense of shock at the thought of investee compa-
nies concealing information. Again, like being upset, laugh-
ter displays an emotional response which demonstrates
unease, maybe embarrassment, at the possibility of their
awareness of reality shifting. They may be embarrassed
at being shown to be ‘duped’ by the companies. Goffman’s
impression management theory and other works have
been identi?ed as driven by individuals’ emotional reac-
tions.
28
We can see that breaking frame, or hypothetically
considering the frame of myth being broken, induced both
emotions and laughter as a response from the audience. This
display of personal emotion and loss of ‘face’ within the
interview setting is viewed by Goffman as evidence of peo-
ples’ perceptions of reality being threatened. As the inves-
tors want to believe companies are telling the truth, the
emotional response (embarrassment and discomfort por-
trayed through being upset or laughing) demonstrates a
reaction which may suggest that investors are unwilling to
accept fabrication: they resist their play?ghting with the
companies becoming a real ?ght.
It is notable that although the investors discuss how
they would act in extreme cases of fabrication they almost
invariably use conditional rather than the perfect/pluper-
fect tenses: ‘if we were’, ‘it would’, ‘we would be’, ‘we
could’. Only in one case did they mention what they had
done (in terms of voting) when they had uncovered lies.
They talk hypothetically about possible changes in invest-
ment behaviour. This means that from the interviews we
cannot be certain that private SER ever becomes an
accountability mechanism leading to share divestment. It
involves dual myth creation frontstage which acknowl-
edges implicitly that backstage the situation is substan-
tially different.
Concluding discussion
This paper contributes to the academic accounting liter-
ature in three ways: by extending research into impression
management from the public to the private reporting con-
text; by extending the analysis of private reporting to the
social and environmental context, and; by extending the
analysis of private reporting through insights from Goff-
man’s work. From interviews held with senior individuals
from 20 leading UK investment institutions we ?nd evi-
dence that the institutional investors perceive their invest-
ee companies manage impressions in private SER and
create a dual myth of social and environmental account-
ability. The empirical evidence informs of the frontstage
processes whereby both investors and investees manage
impressions in meetings but also provides insights into
the backstage, proffering explanations for why private
SER does not generally appear to enhance accountability
and why it is perhaps failing as a genuine mechanism of
social and environmental accountability.
We analyse the investors’ utterances as a Goffmanesque
narrative in order to establish the extent to which the audi-
ence (our interviewees) perceive performers (the compa-
nies) manage impressions during private SER according to
two ‘frames’. The ?rst frame involves presenting an impres-
sion which is acceptable to the audience, managing impres-
sions but with no intentionality or manipulation – in the
investors’ view this would involve the performance ‘repre-
senting reality’. Linked to this, a situation where the audi-
ence appear to be so engrossed that they may be ‘taken in’
by misrepresentation involving manipulation of the
impression presented and fabrication, such that any appar-
ent anomaly/difference between the frontstage perfor-
mance and backstage ‘reality’ is perceived as accidental or
simply represents an attempt to manage impressions by
showing the company in the best light possible, or; a second
frame, where the audience breaks out of the frame/perfor-
mance realising that they have been misled into accepting
a dishonest and intentional misrepresentation of the ‘true’
situation. This last outcome involves the audience acknowl-
edging that there has been an element of fabrication/con-
cealment in the performance, assumes intentionality and
manipulation in the performance and represents a shift in
frame. The ?rst frame of dual myth involving mutual
impression management implies that ‘backstage’ private
SER is deemed a necessary but purely cosmetic exercise
whereas the second frame shows investors shifting the
frontstage to become a genuine mechanism of accountabil-
ity, at odds perhaps with the backstage status quo.
Given that we are employing a Goffmanesque theoreti-
cal framework for interpreting the interviewees’ com-
ments, and that in a Goffman world all is stage managed,
it is not especially surprising that we interpret encounters
between investor and investee as essentially theatrical.
Further, the interviewees do not appear suspicious about
their investees’ staged behaviour, suggesting that they
themselves may accept subconsciously that they live in a
Goffmanesque, stage-managed world.
Consistent with Goffman’s works, embarrassment ap-
pears to be a primary emotion driving interaction: the
28
Scheff (2006) explains the emotions drive the frameworks Goffman
developed, although the emotions were shame and embarrassment and the
fear of being embarrassed during a ‘performance’.
J.F. Solomon et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 38 (2013) 195–213 209
companies want to give good impressions as they do not
want to embarrass themselves in front of their core inves-
tors; the investors appear embarrassed when they feel
they may have been misled, and; the investors also man-
age impressions in meetings as they want to appear pro-
fessional and knowledgeable, implying they also would
not want to embarrass themselves.
The interviewees’ shared reality was that private SER is
characterised by impression management in similar ways
to the management of impressions in public reporting.
We interpreted private SER as more an exercise in creating
a dual myth of social and environmental accountability
rather than a genuine mutual sharing of social and envi-
ronmental information. Our ?ndings show that private
SER is more of an exercise in role play and mutual ‘back
rubbing’ than a genuine exercise in accountability and
reporting. Private SER appears dominated by impression
management and the fabrication of acceptable ‘truths’,
with investees reporting ‘truths’ they believe their inves-
tors wish to hear. Even in cases where investors discovered
a stark rift between their investees’ frontstage perfor-
mance and their companies’ backstage activities, they did
not generally alter their investment behaviour. The mutual
creation of a dual myth of social and environmental
accountability denies any possibility of private SER
enhancing corporate accountability. We suggest that pri-
vate SER is consequently failing to represent a genuine
mechanism of social and environmental accountability
and is falling far short of providing important information
to investors. It is more a Narcissistic ritual of cosmetic sig-
ni?cance than an exercise in social and environmental
accountability. Rather than monitoring their investees dur-
ing the performance, the investors appear to be, for the
most part, a passive, uncritical audience. Goffmanesque,
staged impression management is the technique employed
by both investors and investees to create a dual myth of so-
cial and environmental accountability.
Our empirically-driven study allows us to further the
understanding and interpretation of Goffman’s works per
se. The investors are not the sceptical monitors implied
in Presentation of Self but are, instead, a friendly audience,
keen to ignore gaffs in the performance and unwilling to
accept fabrication or misrepresentation. Goffman’s views
of the performers as managers of impressions, seeking to
re?ect an image they believe is desired by the audience,
is supported fully by our interviewees’ utterances. How-
ever, his predictions about frontstage proactive monitoring
does not seem to apply most of the time in the situation of
private SER. Goffman’s view of engrossment is relevant to
the case of private SER and explains the lack of monitoring
as well as other factors, mainly the prioritisation of ?nan-
cial considerations. It is only in extreme cases of corporate
lying that the audience begin to monitor and ultimately re-
ject the performance. Overall, interpreting private SER
through a Goffmanesque lens allows us to shed greater
light on his framework and conclude that in this particular
case of interaction his framework is apt for the performer
but partially for the audience.
Our ?ndings also echo earlier research which concluded
that stakeholder engagement practices appeared to be
exercises in institutionalising unaccountability rather than
genuine engagement and dialogue (Archel et al., 2011). In-
deed, it appears that the myth created in private SER rep-
resents an illustration of decoupling with private SER
representing a simulacrum of shareholder engagement
which mimics a mechanism of accountability rather than
represents genuine dialogue. In other words the creation
of a dual myth within these meetings represents institu-
tionalisation of unaccountability. Indeed, the investors
are in a double-bind, knowing that they must engage with
companies as they are ‘responsible investors’ whilst simul-
taneously knowing their own institutions are not genu-
inely concerned about these social and environmental
issues and are prioritising ?nancial concerns. This double
bind arises, as suggested by our empirical evidence, from
a complete disinterest in social and environmental
accountability in the institutional investment ‘backstage’.
Further, as our interviewees suggest, backstage pressures
to develop, nurture and maintain close relationships with
investees discourage private SER from enhancing account-
ability as investors do not want to upset investees by ques-
tioning their performance and activities. The investors
highlighted relationship building as a primary driver of pri-
vate SER. This occasion of potential accountability is lost in
the ritualistic mutual creation of a dual myth imbued with
impression management behaviour emphasising that gen-
uine accountability is not the backstage aim of private SER.
Institutional investors are encouraged to engage on so-
cial and environmental issues as a result of their institu-
tions taking account of the Stewardship Code
29
and
signing up to the UNPRI
30
and this creates this contradic-
tory situation. There is also the less cynical possibility that
private SER is still an emergent form of dialogue and that it
will become a more effective accountability mechanism as
it evolves and as the understanding of social and environ-
mental issues and their ?nancial consequences becomes
more embedded within the corporate and institutional
investor communities. Private SER as an emergent form of
engagement may be interpreted as an additional pressure
on companies to discharge accountability. This additional
pressure leads companies conversely to reduce transpar-
ency, presenting an ‘opaque self’. In other words, their ten-
dency to manage impressions and provide a social and
environmental myth in private SER may be interpreted as
a situation of mutual understanding between themselves
and their investors whereby investors recognise the spot-
light is being shone on their investees and decide to afford
them more privacy. Messner (2009) explained that such a
reduction in transparency where there is an expectation
for heightened transparency may be a natural reaction,
‘‘. . . to a situation in which demands for accountability
have become an ethical burden for the accountable self.
29
In the case of our interviewees, this would be earlier codes of best
practice, mainly the Institutional Shareholder Committee Code (which
became the Stewardship Code), as the interviews took place before the
introduction of the Stewardship Code. Engagement and dialogue has also
featured consistently in UK codes of corporate governance since the
Cadbury Code in 1992.
30
The United Nations Principles of Responsible Investment (UNPRI) were
introduced in 2006 and include a focus on: incorporating ESG issues in the
investment decision-making process and engaging actively with investees
on ESG issues.
210 J.F. Solomon et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 38 (2013) 195–213
One may even argue that resistance to accountability is, to
some extent, a normal feature of everyday organizational
life. Indeed, from time to time, discussions or debates have
to be avoided and critical questions have to be ignored in
order to move forward and to ‘get things done’’’ (Messner,
2009, p. 934). Perhaps in the situation of private SER, inves-
tees’ resistance to investors’ questions and their impression
management and even concealment are deemed everyday
acceptable practice by their investors? The creation of a
dual myth may be inkeeping with a situation where invest-
ment is focused on ?nance and private SER represents a
mechanism necessary for keeping up appearances but one
which cannot be allowed to encroach on the ‘real’ invest-
ment decision-making process.
This paper tells a story of impression management,
engrossment and subordination of social and environmen-
tal issues within private SER. The actors in the tale are cre-
ating a dual myth of social and environmental
(un)accountability, with meetings staging ritualistic play
?ghts, playing out eloquent performances, where investors
rarely bare their teeth. The moral of the tale is that unless
private SER becomes a genuine mechanism of accountabil-
ity, with investors not giving companies the bene?t of the
doubt, not becoming engrossed in investees’ performances,
not allowing social and environmental issues to be subor-
dinated, then material sustainability risks and opportuni-
ties will continue to be subordinated to ?nancial
considerations and companies will continue to get away
with murder, prioritising ?nancial indicators, at the ex-
pense of employees, local communities and the natural
environment, future generations, ?ora and fauna. Investors
must adopt the Stewardship Code in spirit, call investees to
account, increase the frequency of their meetings with
investees, ask more pertinent and challenging questions,
follow up discrepancies with greater engagement and act-
ing, where there is fabrication and misrepresentation, by
selling shares. Unless the investors develop ‘teeth’, gover-
nance structures will remain weak, companies will blindly
pursue pro?t and investors will remain poor stewards of
their clients. There is a potential for private SER to act as
an effective mechanism of social and environmental
accountability but from our evidence it seems there is still
a long way to go. Further research is needed to identify
ways in which private SER could be operationalized as a
more effective accountability mechanism. Also, further re-
search needs to address the views of the performers con-
cerning private SER. Lastly, our ?ndings suggest that the
frontstage dual myth created in private SER may be incon-
sistent with the reality of mainstream institutional invest-
ment. To shed greater light on this theoretical model, it
would be useful to interview ‘mainstream’ fund managers
to discover their views of the private SER process and to re-
veal whether they consider it central to the investment
decision-making process or whether they perceive it
purely as a useful relationship building exercise, discon-
nected from ?nancial considerations.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Peter Miller, editor, Accounting,
Organizations & Society, for his support and suggestions
throughout the reviewing process as well as the two anon-
ymous reviewers whose constructive comments have led
to a far improved paper. Thanks to Thomas Scheff, (Univer-
sity of California, Santa Barbara), who provided sugges-
tions and a number of his own works on Goffman to
guide us in rewriting this paper. We are grateful to dele-
gates from the British Accounting Association conference
(April 2009) in Dundee, and the European Accounting
Association annual conference (May 2009) in Tampere,
Finland, for their constructive comments on the develop-
ment of this paper. Special thanks go to David Collison,
Cameron Graham, Michael John Jones, Michelle Rodrigue,
Tony Tinker and Thomas Thijssens. We also thank the del-
egates at the Financial Reporting and Business Communi-
cations conference (July 2009), Cardiff, who commented
on the paper, especially Barry Morse and Maurice Pendle-
bury. We are grateful to accounting and ?nance faculty at
Swansea University, School of Business and Economics
who commented on this paper when it was delivered for
their staff seminar series in October 2009, especially Mike
Adams, Deb Lewis and Dylan Thomas. Thanks also to Rich-
ard Laughlin and Simon Tan (King’s College London) for
their insightful comments on this paper. We would also
like to thank students taking Investment Management at
King’s College, London (Spring 2010) for their ideas arising
from discussions on theoretical aspects of this paper.
Thanks to faculty at the Turku School of Economics, Fin-
land, who commented on an earlier draft of this paper
when we presented it to the accounting department in Au-
gust 2011. We are also grateful to faculty who attended our
seminar presentation of this paper to the School of Eco-
nomics, Business and Law at the University of Gothenburg,
Sweden, in August 2011, especially Barbara Czarniawska,
Inga-Lill Johansson, Kristina Jonäll, Thomas Polesie and
Gunnar Rimmel. We are grateful to the Nuf?eld Founda-
tion for the ?nancial support in carrying out this research.
We are also grateful to Sally Filson for her assistance in
interviewing the participants for this research and for tran-
scribing the interviews.
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