The ethical, social and environmental reporting‐performance portrayal gap

The purpose of this article is twofold. First, it assesses in detail the extent to which corporate reporting on ethical, social and environmental issues reflects corporate performance in case study company Alpha. This “reporting‐performance” portrayal gap is a key measure of the extent to which an organisation is accountable to its stakeholders. Alpha's disclosures concerning its ethical, social and environmental performance for the years 1993 and 1999 were compared with information obtained on Alpha's performance from other sources. Two different pictures of performance emerged leading to the conclusion that, in the case of Alpha, reports do not demonstrate a high level of accountability to key stakeholder…