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We present a critical literature review debating Brazilian research on social and environmental accounting (SEA). The aim of this study is to understand the role of politics in the construction of hegemonies in SEA research in Brazil. In particular, we examine the role of hegemony in relation to the co-option of SEA literature and sustainability in the Brazilian context by the logic of development for economic growth in emerging economies. The methodological approach adopts a post-structural perspective that reflects Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse theory. The study employs a hermeneutical, rhetorical approach to understand and classify 352 Brazilian research articles on SEA. We employ Brown and Fraser’s (2006) categorizations of SEA literature to help in our analysis: the business case, the stakeholder–accountability approach, and the critical case. We argue that the business case is prominent in Brazilian studies. Second-stage analysis suggests that the major themes under discussion include measurement, consulting, and descriptive approach. We argue that these themes illustrate the degree of influence of the hegemonic politics relevant to emerging economics, as these themes predominantly concern economic growth and a capitalist context. This paper discusses trends and practices in the Brazilian literature on SEA and argues that the focus means that SEA avoids critical debates of the role of capitalist logics in an emerging economy concerning sustainability. We urge the Brazilian academy to understand the implications of its reifying agenda and engage, counter-hegemonically, in a social and political agenda beyond the hegemonic support of a particular set of capitalist interests.

This paper aims to analyze what Samarco and Brazilian magazines speak and say about Mariana’s environmental crime. Discover their doxa in this subject. Interpret the speakings, sayings and doxas through the theories of the treadmills of production, crime and law.

It is a qualitative and documental research and a narrative analysis. Regarding the documents: 45 were from public authorities, 14 from Samarco Mineração S.A. and 73 from Brazilian magazines. Theoretically, the authors resorted to Bourdieusian sociology (speaking, saying and doxa) and the treadmills of production, crime and law theories.

Samarco: speaking – mission statements; saying – detailed information and economic and financial concerns; doxa – assistance discourse. Brazilian magazines: speaking – external agents; saying – agreements; doxa – attribution, aggravations, historical facts, impacts and protests.

The absence of discussions that addressed this fatality, with its respective consequences, from an agenda that exposed and denounced how it exacerbated race, class and gender inequalities.

Regarding Mariana’s environmental crime: Samarco Mineração S.A. speaks and says through the treadmill of production theory and supports its doxa through the treadmill of crime theory, and Brazilian magazines speak and say through the treadmill of law theory and support their doxa through the treadmill of crime theory.

To provoke reflections on the relationship between the mining companies and the communities where they settle to develop their productive activities.

Concerning environmental crime in perspective, submit it to a theoretical interpretation based on sociological references, approach it in a debate linked to environmental criminology, and describe it through narratives exposed by the guilty company and by Brazilian magazines with high circulation.

This paper aims to explore the role of storytelling and impression management (IM) through the president’s letter in legitimizing the practices of an electricity company with regard to controversial issues during a period of change.

Drawing on a qualitative case study, this paper examines annual report letters from 1995 to 2013 using a methodological interpretative approach.

By promoting a success story using IM, the presidents give sense to particular actions related with controversial issues and attempt to influence expectations on strategic changes. The findings demonstrate that organizational actors use the flexibility of the president’s letter to tell the story and emphasize its self-laudatory nature. The study highlights that storytelling in these documents can be used to alleviate the tensions created by the inherent contradictions of social structures.

This research is useful for regulatory authorities, users of annual reports and academic researchers, making them attentive of the narratives companies may adopt to protect their legitimacy. The findings shed light on the need to evaluate the credibility of accountability mechanisms and can help stakeholders to develop a more critical view of the president’s letter.

This paper makes a contribution to research on communication issues by expanding literature on accounting and organizational storytelling. By demonstrating how presidents use sensegiving as a means of legitimacy-claiming, this study adds to the literature on legitimating accounts. In doing so, this paper bridges the gap between theories about organizational legitimacy, storytelling and IM. To sum up, the findings serve as an incremental step toward understanding the nature of accountability reporting.

Constrained input use and lower productivity of rural establishments may be associated with restricted or concentrated access to financial resources, especially in developing countries. Meanwhile, agricultural activity entails risks associated with the volatility of net cash flows and external events, which may discourage riskier but higher return investments (e.g. technology). As rural credit can alleviate the former, and rural insurance may help alleviate the latter, the combination of both policies might endorse each other. The purpose of this study is to analyze the use of rural credit and rural insurance policies with respect to productivity and crop area, in São Paulo state, Brazil, using farmer's microdata from two surveys realized in 2007/08 and 2016/17.

This study uses propensity score matching and the entropy balance approaches in a complementary way. This study compared three policy treatments – rural credit, rural insurance and both policies combined, against establishments that received neither one. The analysis considered sugarcane, grain and grape crops separately and employed farmer's microdata. Moreover, the analysis was stratified into two categories: establishments owned by family farmers and those that did not.

Rural credit policy is related to higher productivity and larger cultivated area for grains and only to larger area for grape crops in the last analyzed period (2016/17). Rural insurance, as a unique policy or combined with credit, is related to higher productivity and cultivated areas, for all analyzed crops, only in the second period (2016/17), as the policy became more accessible to farmers. Heterogeneity regarding crops and farmers might influence the effectiveness of these policies. Despite rural insurance being related to a better performance regarding the outcome variables, it still reaches a small share of farmers, especially when combined with credit.

Many studies about the effectiveness of rural credit in Brazil have been conducted throughout the years, while there have been fewer studies regarding rural insurance since it became an important policy in the mid-2000s. However, few studies have conducted an analysis comparing its individual and interactive influences, with such level of disaggregation, on a farm-level database, considering the heterogeneity of the data and the different categories of farmers.