https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3715-0881
![Sample our Environment & Sustainability journals, sign in here to start your access, latest two full volumes FREE to you for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5935/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Environment-Sustainability.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
This commentary/reflection offers a critical analysis of four articles presenting literature reviews concerning Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) research in accounting published in North American-based or inspired accounting research journals and of the research on which they focus. This analysis is presented against the backdrop of [Gond, J.P., S. Mena, and S. Mosonyi. 2023. The performativity of literature reviewing: Constituting the corporate social responsibility literature through re-presentation and intervention. Organizational Research Methods 26, no. 2: 195–228] conceptualisation of the performative effects of literature reviews, examinations of the recent resurgence of CSR research in top-tier North American-based accounting journals offered by well-established social and environmental accounting (SEA) researchers, as well as in light of some of the many reviews on the same or similar lines of research. Whilst previous examinations of such resurgence focused on regular articles, this reflection focuses on literature reviews, which I consider a negative development in view of what they represent in terms of the self-referencing behaviour already present in the literature they review. This commentary serves the purpose of cautioning those interested in becoming acquainted with accounting research on CSR-related topics that the reviews examined should not be used as an entry point, given that they offer a rather incomplete picture of such research. Rather, they should only be used after having acquired a global view of CSR-related literature.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank the editors for their insightful comments and helpful suggestions. Without their assistance, this paper would be much less clear and reasoned. The views expressed and any failings of the article remain the responsibility of the author.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Although this research is known to the readers of this journal as SEA research, in this note the term CRS(-related) research in accounting is the most often used one. Reasons for this include this term being the one used by three of the four literature reviews analyzed and being the term used by the majority of the most recent analyses of the new wave of such research by the mainstream accounting community (Cho et al. Citation2015; Cho Citation2020a; Patten Citation2013, Citation2020; Roberts Citation2018). Given that this paper also intends to engage with the readers of the reviews mentioned above and caution them regarding their biasedness, it seems appropriate to use this term. Other analyses use the term SEA research (Cho and Giordano-Spring Citation2015; Cho and Patten Citation2013; Parker Citation2005, Citation2014). Other alternatives to ‘CSR’ and ‘social and environmental’ are ‘sustainability’ and, ‘more fashionably ‘ESG (environmental social and governance)’’ (Cho Citation2020, 627).
2 Guthrie et al. (Citation2019, 12) use the expression ‘North-American or North-American inspired journals’. The Journal of Accounting Literature (JAL), which was established in 1982 at the University of Florida and was published by this university in the period 1982–2012 and by Elsevier between 2013 and 2019, was until 2019 a North American-based journal. In 2022 (after two years of inactivity), after its acquisition by Emerald, it resumed its publication as part of Emerald’s Accounting & Finance collection. Although probably one cannot presently consider this journal a North American-based journal, in view of its long history as such, it is considered here a North American-inspired journal.
3 Charles Cho, Den Patten and Robin Roberts are prominent members of the Centre for Social and Environmental Research (CSEAR) North American community. Den Patten and Charles Cho feature in CSEAR’s web page as international associates and Cho is a member of the CSEAR council. For example, they all have been on the organizing committee and/or the scientific committee of the 8th CSEAR North America Conference (in 2022) and Cho and Roberts are in the organizing committee of the forthcoming 8th CSEAR North America Conference (to occur in June 20-21, 2024).
4 Noteworthily, the JCP publishes a great deal more of numbers per year compared to all the other journals. For example, in 2023 over 50 volumes were published.