Substantive and symbolic strategies sustaining the environmentally friendly ideology

Mohamed Chelli, Sylvain Durocher and Anne Fortin

Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, 2019, vol. 32, issue 4, 1013-1042

Abstract: Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to longitudinally explore the symbolic and substantive ideological strategies located in ENGIE’s environmental discourse while considering the specific negative media context surrounding the company’s environmental activities. Design/methodology/approach - Thompson’s (2007) andEagleton’s (2007) theorizations are used to build an extended ideological framework to analyze ENGIE’s environmental talk from 2001 to 2015. Findings - ENGIE drew extensively on a combination of symbolic and substantive ideological strategies in its annual and sustainability reports while ignoring several major issues raised in the press. Its substantive ideological mode of operation included actions for the environment, innovation, partnerships and educating stakeholders/staff, while its symbolic ideological mode of operation used issue identification, legal compliance, rationalization, stakeholders’ responsibilization and unification. Both ideological modes of operation worked synergistically to cast a positive light on ENGIE’s environmental activities, sustaining the ideology of a company that reconciles the irreconcilable despite negative press coverage. Originality/value - This paper develops the notion of environmentally friendly ideology to analyze the environmental discourse of a polluting company. It is the first to use both Thompson’s and Eagleton’s ideological frameworks to make sense of corporate environmental discourse. Linking corporate discourse with media coverage, it further contributes to the burgeoning literature that interpretively distinguishes between symbolic and substantive ideological strategies by highlighting the company’s progressive shift from symbolic to more substantive disclosure.

Keywords: Discourse analysis; Environmental reporting; Environmentally friendly ideology; Media; Symbolic and substantive ideological strategies (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (text/html)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eme:aaajpp:aaaj-02-2018-3343

DOI: 10.1108/AAAJ-02-2018-3343

Access Statistics for this article

Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal is currently edited by Prof James Guthrie and Prof Lee Parker

More articles in Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal from Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Emerald Support ().