Wait-and-See-Ism as Partial Adoption of Management Practices: The Rise and Stall of Integrated Reporting

Integrated reporting (IR) has widely been promoted as the next - evolutionary step in corporate disclosure which would soon replace - traditional reporting practices. Embedded in a zeitgeist that favors - sustainability, this outlook would suggest high IR adoption rates among - reporting organizations. Our analysis of IR in Germany from 2008 to - 2019 shows, however, that organizations approached IR with a wait-and- - see mentality. This approach cannot be described adequately by the - existing conceptualizations of (partial) practice adoption. We therefore - develop the notion of wait-and-see-ism, defined as the deliberate and - potentially long-lasting postponement of a decision to adopt a practice - while its further development is monitored silently. We see limited, - though continuous, efforts to prepare for the prospect of adopting the - practice of IR quickly at a later stage. Wait-and-see-ism expands on - prior work on partial adoption by emphasizing its temporal dimension. - This adds an important yet undertheorized option that organizations can - employ to respond to ambiguous institutional demands, thus explaining - the stalling of promising management practices. Link to the article

ENDENICH, C., HAHN, R., REIMSBACH, D. and WICKERT, C. (2023). Wait-and-See-Ism as Partial Adoption of Management Practices: The Rise and Stall of Integrated Reporting. Strategic Organization, 21(3), pp. 566-595.

Keywords : #Integrated-reporting, #practice-adoption, #partial-adoption, #sustainability-reporting, #substantive, #adoption, #symbolic-adoption