Submitted by clara giraldou (clara.giraldou@hec.edu) on 2017-11-29T17:08:24Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Thesis - Clara Giraldou.pdf: 1001288 bytes, checksum: 280f342190a07f2aba3878d0b6a50e7c (MD5) / Rejected by Josineide da Silva Santos Locatelli (josineide.locatelli@fgv.br), reason: Oi Clara, Por favor veja as correções a serem feitas na sua tese: Página 1: Deve ter o nome completo do aluno, retire uns três espaços antes do título, o título está diferente do informado anteriormente: THE INFLUENCE OF CIVIL SOCIETY ORGANIZATIONS ON THE EXTENT OF CORRUPTION IN THE PRIVATE SECTOR Página 2: Corrigir o título, em “Knowledge field” deve ter a linha do seu orientador: INTERNACIONALIZAÇÃO DE EMPRESAS; Página 3: A Ficha Catalográfica deve ficar no final da página; Página 4: Colocar o nome completo, corrigir o título, Knowledge field” deve ter a linha do seu orientador: INTERNACIONALIZAÇÃO DE EMPRESAS; Acknowledments, Abstract, Resumo e TABLE OF CONTENTS deve estar no centro da página e com letras maiúsculas. Depois dessas correções, por favor, poste novamente. on 2017-11-29T17:45:14Z (GMT) / Submitted by clara giraldou (clara.giraldou@hec.edu) on 2017-11-29T18:06:52Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Thesis - Clara Giraldou.pdf: 1002258 bytes, checksum: a0203a44600fdc18c46b09e536344c2d (MD5) / Rejected by Josineide da Silva Santos Locatelli (josineide.locatelli@fgv.br), reason: Oi Clara, Por favor veja mais algumas correções a serem feitas na sua tese: Página 1: Dar espaço até o seu nome ir para a próxima página; Página 2: Nome no início da página, na linha do orientador tem que está em português: Internacionalização de Empresas; Retirar todos os números de páginas antes da introdução, porém devem ser considerados. Por exemplo, se tem 9 páginas antes, a introdução deve começar com a página 10. on 2017-11-29T18:28:24Z (GMT) / Submitted by clara giraldou (clara.giraldou@hec.edu) on 2017-11-29T19:12:14Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Thesis - Clara Giraldou.pdf: 1000898 bytes, checksum: 4babc783137f72178d2c4ee5e4b24174 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Josineide da Silva Santos Locatelli (josineide.locatelli@fgv.br) on 2017-11-30T12:07:51Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Thesis - Clara Giraldou.pdf: 1000898 bytes, checksum: 4babc783137f72178d2c4ee5e4b24174 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-11-30T12:18:08Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Thesis - Clara Giraldou.pdf: 1000898 bytes, checksum: 4babc783137f72178d2c4ee5e4b24174 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2017-11-29 / Corruption is widespread in developed countries and emerging countries alike, both in the public and private sector, and corrupt activities have become embedded within daily routines for too many companies and government branches worldwide. Over the past few decades, corruption has stopped being considered as a taboo and most of people on earth now agree with the founder of the well-known organization Transparency International (TI), Peter Eigen, on the fact that corruption is ‘undermining everything’ (Eigen, 2010) and urgently needs to be fought back. The challenge faced by civil society organizations or any actor fighting corruption today is new: finding a way to rectify an already corrupt system where corruption has become normative. It is about inducing organizational change, working towards a context where change is more likely to occur. The objective of this paper is to examine civil society organizations’ actions to understand whether and how it is possible to bring about change within organizations to get them rid of corruption. It focuses on TI, which leads the fight against corruption worldwide and calls itself a body that strives to ‘stir the world’s collective conscience and bring about change’ (TI, 2016). / A corrupção está presente tão em países desenvolvidos como em países emergentes e difundida tão no setor público como no setor privado. Atividades corruptas já estão enraizadas na vida cotidiana para demasiadas empresas e órgãos do governo. Nas últimas décadas, o mundo parou de considerar a corrupção como um tabu e a maioria das pessoas concordariam agora com Peter Eigen, o fundador de Transparency International (TI), para dizer que a corrupção ‘prejudica tudo’ (Eigen, 2010) e que precisamos combatê-la. Organizações da sociedade civil que lutam contra a corrupção enfrentam agora um novo desafio: identificar uma maneira de corrigir um sistema que já está corrupto e no qual a corrupção representa a nova norma. Consiste em induzir uma mudança nas organizações, estabelecer um contexto onde alterações podem mais facilmente ocorrer. O objetivo desse trabalho acadêmico consiste em examinar as ações das organizações de sociedade civil para entender se é possível e como suscitar mudanças nas organizações para libertá-las da corrupção. Foca a atenção na famosa instituição TI, que indica o caminho para combater a corrupção e se identifica como uma organização que se empenha em ‘agitar a consciência coletiva do mundo e fomentar mudança’ (TI, 2016).

This dissertation deals with firms’ visual and pre-visual self-representations in accounting narratives. Self-representations are those descriptions about the company that firms include in accounting narratives to convey the current standings and their identity. External stakeholders increasingly expect non-numerical information about firms to be disclosed, and accounting narratives are a key medium for firms to account for their activities and maintain legitimacy as social actors. The question of which reporting conventions exist for legitimating selfrepresentations, especially from a visual perspective, remains unexplored. The purpose of this study is therefore to explore the empirical phenomenon of self-representations in accounting narratives in relation to legitimation rhetoric. The study is based on three research papers dealing with different patterns of self-representations in accounting-related narratives, including corporate reporting and business model diagrams. The examples are viewed through the theoretical lenses of semiotics and institutional theory, particularly legitimation theory. The study combines visual methods (visual content analysis and visual taxonomy) with other methods (interviews, text analysis) to conceptualize and exemplify what is meant by self-representations in accounting narratives. The study finds that there may be multiple parallel pre-visual self-representations at play to influence representations of the self, that visual self-representations are becoming more common in accounting narratives, and that several rhetorical strategies for legitimation are observable in these representations. By showing how diagrams can serve a legitimating purpose in accounting narratives, it is argued that diagrams should be considered on par with graphs and photographs as visual rhetorical devices in accounting narratives, and that they could be used as key communicative elements in the accounting process. Second, based on the longitudinal and comparative examples of self-representations, it is suggested that self-representations increasingly refer to abstract rather than concrete referents. This change is discussed in terms of the increasingly digital and service-based knowledge economy, where material referents give way to “amaterial” values. The contribution of this study is to describe selfrepresentations through several empirical examples, and to thereby increase awareness among practitioners and researchers of how visuals serve as communicative resources with legitimating functions in accounting narratives. Four concepts are proposed as tools for explaining the observed developments, and for improving visual literacy with regard to accounting narratives: inclusive perspective on accounting narratives, amateriality, self-representation, and diagrams. / Denna licentiatavhandling handlar om företags visuella och ”för-visuella” själv-representationer i kontexten redovisning. Till självrepresentationer hör de beskrivningar som företaget inkluderar i sin externt rapporterade information för att förmedla dess ställning och identitet. Externa intressenter förväntar sig i ökande utsträckning att även icke-numerisk information redovisas av företaget, vilket gör denna typ av externt rapporterade information viktig för att redovisa aktiviteter och för företag att därigenom bibehålla legitimitet som sociala aktörer. Frågan om vilka rapporteringskonventioner som finns kring företags självrepresentationer är i dagsläget inte utforskad. Syftet med denna studie är därför att undersöka det empiriska fenomenet självrepresentationer i kontexten redovisning kopplat till perspektivet legitimeringsretorik. Studien baserar sig på tre forskningsartiklar som behandlar olika empiriska exempel och mönster av självrepresentationer, exempelvis affärsmodellsdiagram. Dessa betraktas utifrån de teoretiska linserna semiotik och institutionell teori, speciellt legitimeringsteori. Studien kombinerar visuella metoder (visuell innehållsanalys och visuell taxonomi) med andra metoder (intervjuer och textanalys) för att konceptualisera och exemplifiera vad som menas med självrepresentation i kontexten redovisning. Studien finner att det kan förekomma många parallella för-visuella självrepresentationer som påverkar företags självuppfattning, att visuella självrepresentationer blir alltmer vanliga i företags externt publicerade information, och att flera retoriska legitimeringsstrategier förekommer i det undersökta materialet. Genom att visa hur diagram används som kommunikationsresurs så argumenterar studien för att fortsatt forskning behövs för att undersöka hur diagram, likt mer utforskade visuella format såsom grafer och fotografier, bidrar till företags legitimeringsretorik i externt publicerad redovisningskommunikation, samt att diagram kan fungera som viktiga resurser för självrepresentation i företags redovisningsprocess. Dessutom föreslås, baserat på longitudinella och jämförande exempel, att självrepresentationer i ökande grad relaterar till abstrakta snarare än konkreta referenter. Denna förändring diskuteras i termer av en alltmer digital och tjänstebaserad kunskapsekonomi, där materiella referenter överges till förmån för ”amateriella” värden. Studiens bidrag är att beskriva själv-representationer genom flera empiriska exempel, och att därmed öka medvetenheten hos praktiker och forskare om hur visuella format kan tjäna legitimeringssyften i kontexten redovisning. Baserat på studiens analys och resonemang lyfts fyra begrepp fram för att förklara den observerade utvecklingen, samt för att bidra till att förbättra praktikers såväl som forskares ”visuella läskunnighet”: ett inkluderande perspektiv på externt publicerad information, amaterialitet, självrepresentation, och diagram.

This paper-based dissertation comprises five essays dealing with corporate sustainability and digital reporting and is structured in six chapters. The first chapter is the introduction and provides an overview of the structure and aims of the dissertation, lays out the contribution of the work, and introduces the five manuscripts. The second chapter, respectively the first manuscript, deals with the consequences of mandatory sustainability reporting in Europe. Specifically, the study deals with the question whether Directive 2014/95/EU has achieved its objectives of increasing reporting quantity and quality. In the third chapter, the sustainability reports of the largest European firms are analyzed using computer-aided text analysis. This study investigates whether and how external assurance of sustainability reports is beneficial from the viewpoint of report transparency, which is proxied by reporting scope, optimism, and readability. In the fourth chapter, the role of corporate sustainability in the context of M&A transactions is examined, precisely whether sustainability influences the premia paid in M&A transactions. The fifth and the sixth chapters center around the voluntary usage of online financial reporting (OFR) in Europe. While the fifth chapter is concerned with the usage and empirical determinants of OFR, the analysis in the sixth chapter examines the impact of OFR on the financial market, specifically on analyst following and stock liquidity.