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This study aims to identify the legitimacy strategies employed by one of the largest Portuguese cement companies to defend and downplay its sustainability performance and activities related to two major controversies involving the company: co‐incineration and the location of the Outão plant.

A single case study methodology is employed for the empirical research. Sustainability reports were analysed in order to identify TimorL's sustainability disclosure practices, and semi‐structured interviews were conducted to complement the case analysis. This paper emphasises legitimacy theory and legitimacy repair strategies that were identified by Suchman.

Legitimacy strategies, including “don’t panic”; “create monitors”; “justify”; “disassociate” and “explain”, were identified in the actions TimorL took after the above‐mentioned controversies. The company initiated a series of actions to respond to the company's “crisis”. The conclusions of the study support the argument that sustainability strategies remain a powerful legitimacy tool.

The paper adds to the scarce research available on the sustainability disclosure and practices of companies by providing new empirical data. It contributes to a better understanding of how companies behave when they are faced with legitimacy gaps and how they act to restore their legitimacy.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a descriptive comprehensive analysis of sustainability reporting (SR) and assurance in Portugal after the onset of the most recent economic crisis.

The authors analyze 290 sustainability reports for the years 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011, and find those that include assurance statements and characterize them.

The authors present evidence supporting the view that the Portuguese sustainability reporting assurance (SRA) market follows the international trends and suggest that the most recent economic crisis had a negative effect in terms of publication of sustainability reports but not in terms of its quality and assurance.

The authors merely provide descriptive evidence of SR and the assurance thereof in Portugal.

The authors contribute significantly to the literature on SRA in peripheral countries and in the period of crisis.

The paper aims to analyse the engagement in sustainability reporting assurance (SRA) by a sample of Portuguese firms between 2008 and 2011.

Bivariate and multivariate non-parametric statistics is used to analyse some factors that influence the decision to have sustainability reports assured.

Results indicate that size, leverage, profitability, listing status and industrial affiliation are determinants of SRA, whereas type of ownership is not. A downward trend in sustainability reporting and its assurance was also detected.

The sample is small.

It adds to the scarce research on SRA by providing new empirical data in a context of crisis and extends prior research by analysing the effects of listing status and type of ownership.

We present a critical literature review debating Brazilian research on social and environmental accounting (SEA). The aim of this study is to understand the role of politics in the construction of hegemonies in SEA research in Brazil. In particular, we examine the role of hegemony in relation to the co-option of SEA literature and sustainability in the Brazilian context by the logic of development for economic growth in emerging economies. The methodological approach adopts a post-structural perspective that reflects Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse theory. The study employs a hermeneutical, rhetorical approach to understand and classify 352 Brazilian research articles on SEA. We employ Brown and Fraser’s (2006) categorizations of SEA literature to help in our analysis: the business case, the stakeholder–accountability approach, and the critical case. We argue that the business case is prominent in Brazilian studies. Second-stage analysis suggests that the major themes under discussion include measurement, consulting, and descriptive approach. We argue that these themes illustrate the degree of influence of the hegemonic politics relevant to emerging economics, as these themes predominantly concern economic growth and a capitalist context. This paper discusses trends and practices in the Brazilian literature on SEA and argues that the focus means that SEA avoids critical debates of the role of capitalist logics in an emerging economy concerning sustainability. We urge the Brazilian academy to understand the implications of its reifying agenda and engage, counter-hegemonically, in a social and political agenda beyond the hegemonic support of a particular set of capitalist interests.

This paper aims to analyze the current state of integration of sustainable development (SD), in the academic curricula of Business Sciences degrees, including matters about Ethics, Corporate Social Responsibility and Sustainability. In this way, the paper explores how Portuguese public higher education institutions (HEI) contribute to teaching about sustainable development (TSD).

The study focuses on Business Sciences degrees. The webpages of all public HEI with BSc and MSc degrees in those areas in Portugal were analyzed, to obtain curricular plans and syllabus. Content analysis was performed on each of these elements of Accounting and Taxation and Management and Business Administration courses.

There is already some concern about addressing SD in Business Sciences, inasmuch as SD-related topics are taught in Accounting and Taxation and in Management and Business Administration degrees and courses. However, the analysis shows that TSD was integrated into the academic curricula in only 95 degrees (48.5%). Additionally, in these, there are only 79 compulsory curricular units that address this theme. Given the fact that the subject of SD is increasingly relevant, the paper evidence still much room for improvement, indicating that TSD is yet a big challenge for HEI.

TSD is increasingly important because of the growing globalization that requires skilled professionals able to assess the complex and controversial issues related to the topic, to achieve and implement the SD goals in 2030. The literature evidence lack of studies addressing the integration of the SD theme in academic curricula. This paper makes here a contribution by showing what HEI is teaching in the area of business studies. It also brings good implications for society, while showing that sustainability content is becoming more apparent within certain HEI courses. This could be used to create follow up research on what type of sustainability content is being included within the courses and the learning that is happening in students in regard to this sustainability content.

This paper aims to investigate whether religiosity and religious diversity affect the adoption of sustainability reporting assurance (SRA) by companies based in predominantly Roman Catholic and Protestant countries. To this aim, a theoretical framework is developed using the social norm, signalling and agency theories.

A pooled logit regression model is applied on a sample of 2,541 firm-year observations collected from the most sustainable companies in Europe in the period between 2004 and 2015 to test the effect of religiosity on SRA adoption. Different analyses are used to check for the robustness of the findings and a generalized method of moments (GMM) is used to address potential endogeneity issues.

The results of this study show that companies based in highly religious countries are more likely to adopt SRA practices to show compliance with the religious social norms of their stakeholders. The results also show that companies based in predominantly Roman Catholic countries are more likely to adopt SRA practices than those operating in Protestant countries. This may be due to the fact that the structural organization of Catholicism is based on a vertical, top-down control system, which does not foster trust and requires constant assurance. This explains the emphasis placed on SRA by stakeholders adhering to Catholicism. Stakeholders from Protestant countries, on the other hand, tend to rely more on the principles of social ethics and social mutual control that characterize their doctrine and, therefore, do not need any additional, external assurance of corporate commitment to sustainability.

This paper provides new insights into the influence that religiosity and religious diversity have on SRA. This study also provides evidence on the usefulness of social norm theory for conducting empirical research into corporate practices and could set an example for future studies in this field.