Impression Management in Sustainability Reporting on the Norwegian Continental Shelf
Abstract
Sustainability reporting can be used by companies as a corporate communication tool tocommunicate their sustainability efforts, and principles towards their stakeholders (Ebringer etal, 2006, p. 512). Corporate communication is linked to impression management, and managerscan use impression management tactics to both alter the impression projected across tocompany’s audiences and utilize them to gain organizational legitimacy which will help firmssurvive in society and gain success. In this master thesis we have explored to what extent fourdifferent Oil and Gas companies operating on the Norwegian Continental shelf use impressionmanagement in their sustainability reports to influence the public perception and the legitimacyof their environmental and sustainability work.
The research is based on a qualitative research method where we analyzed the impressionmanagement tactics used by four different Oil and Gas companies operating on the NorwegianContinental shelf in their sustainability reports from 2018 – 2022.
The findings from our study show that Oil and Gas companies to an increasing extent utilizedifferent impression management tactics in their sustainability reports. Assertive impressionmanagement tactics are more frequently used than defensive impression management tactics,this demonstrates that the Oil and Gas companies use impression management strategies as atool to build, gain and maintain organizational legitimacy rather than repair organizationallegitimacy. This can be linked to Oil and Gas companies need for legitimacy as they operate ina controversial industry, which has been highly criticized for its environmental andsustainability performance. Furthermore, our results revealed that companies use impressionmanagement tactics to highlight positive results and shift focus away from negative outcomes.However, our study has also shown that excessive use of impression management canundermine its purpose, as it can leave audiences feeling skeptical or confused. Our findingshave agreed with what previous research revealed on the topic impression management andshown that the use of impression management tactics in sustainability reporting has seen anincrease over the period studied.
Traditionally impression management has mostly been applied at individual level, thus ourresearch contributes to better understanding of how impression management can be employedat organizational level. In addition, it can be used to get an understanding of how and whycompanies use different impression management tactics to manage and manipulatestakeholders’ perceptions.