How governmental regulation shapes micro-institutional coupling in the field of corporate sustainability - the case of the European non-financial reporting directive
Publication date
2025-12-01
Document type
Preprint
Author
Foersterling, Johanna
Jastram, Sarah Margaretha
Venturelli, Andrea
Organisational unit
Hamburg School of Business Administration
Publisher
Universitätsbibliothek der HSU/UniBw H
Part of the university bibliography
Nein
Language
English
DDC Class
330 Wirtschaft
Keyword
Non-financial reporting
Regulation
Decoupling
Institutional theory
Abstract
In this article, we examine the interaction between governmental regulation and business governance structures in the field of sustainability. We are investigating the output of the first European mandatory non-financial reporting directive (NFRD) and explore if and how this new type of sustainability regulation is changing organizations on the micro-institutional level. Our study is based on a qualitative, inductive analysis. We find that the NFRD tightened micro-institutional coupling by having strong effects on actor constellations, structures and processes within businesses, a phenomenon which we describe as reconfiguration of intra-organizational institutional elements. We make three main contributions: First, we provide rich empirical data on micro-institutional outputs of non-financial reporting regulation. Second, we contribute to theoretical debates about institutional decoupling by shedding new light on micro-institutional changes in element structures and their interaction caused by regulation. Third, we inform the non-financial reporting and accounting literature by providing new findings and perspectives related to the introduction of the first mandatory non-financial reporting legislation at EU-level. Our study is also relevant for policy makers as it highlights relevant, previously unknown outputs of governmental regulation on micro-institutional organizational levels.
Version
Author's original
Access right on openHSU
Open access