Organizational façades and hypocrisy within sustainability reports : A qualitative content analysis of Royal Bank of Scotland’s sustainability reports between 2008-2013

Sammanfattning: Abstract Background: Sustainability reporting is an important communication channel for corporations to increase legitimacy in the public eye and handle different stakeholder demands (Blanc et al., 2017). In order to manage different stakeholder demands scholars have developed different theories to detect any inconsistencies between a corporation’s communication and actions, namely organizational façades and organizational hypocrisy. Purpose: The purpose of this master thesis is to understand in which way RBS are misleading, in form of communication, their customers in their sustainability reports. This phenomenon is investigated between 2008-2013. It is under this period the FCA (2016) investigation concluded that the bank had misled their customers. Method: This thesis adopts the qualitative content analysis when conducting the research. This method aids to categorize the text data which helps to make a large sample of text more attainable and easier to analyse and find connections within the data. In this thesis the textual data is coded into one of the three following codes: (i.) Rational façades - the organization meet fundamental norms of rationality. (ii.) Progressive façades - the organization do not only show rationality but also progress. (iii.) Reputational façades - statements that are disclosed in order to meet demands of the most critical stakeholders (Abrahamson, & Baumard, 2008) Conclusion: The results show that the most frequently apparent façades in the sustainability reports are progressive façades, followed by reputational façades and lastly rational façades. Moreover, the findings of this thesis uncovered clear sub-categories fitting under each façade. The sub-categories discovered were eight folded. Lastly, the results show that RBS shows signs of organizational hypocrisy, since their sustainability report disclosures and their actions are not in line, during the investigation period.