Open AccessWait-and-see-ism as partial adoption of management practices: The rise and stall of integrated reporting
Author(s) -
Christoph Endenich,
Rüdiger Hahn,
Daniel Reimsbach,
Christopher Wickert
Publication year - 2022
Publication title -
strategic organization
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.135
H-Index - 57
eISSN - 1741-315X
pISSN - 1476-1270
DOI - 10.1177/14761270221078605
Subject(s) - integrated reporting , postponement , dimension (graph theory) , business , best practice , sustainability , public relations , marketing , economics , management , political science , ecology , mathematics , pure mathematics , biology
Integrated reporting 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 integrated reporting adoption rates among reporting organizations. Our analysis of integrated reporting in Germany from 2008 to 2019 shows, however, that organizations approached integrated reporting 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 integrated reporting 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.