The forms of repetition in social and environmental reports: insights from Hume's notion of ‘impressions’

Abstract

This paper focuses on the use of repetition, both in narrative and visual forms, in social and environmental reports. It investigates the forms of repetition as a rhetorical device adopted by the preparer of a social and environmental report in helping the process of knowledge acquisition, as outlined by Hume [1739. A Treatise of Human Nature. Available from: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/4705/4705-h/4705-h.htm#link2H_4_0006]. Drawing from Hume's (1739) philosophical idea of an ‘impression’, and the work of Davison [2014a. Visual rhetoric and the case of intellectual capital. Accounting Organization and Society, 39 (1), 20–37], we classify repetitions into ‘identical’, ‘similar', and ‘accumulated’ forms. It is argued that the rationale for distinguishing between the different forms of repetition can be linked to their different potential or intensity in acting on different stimuli with a view to enhance learning. The empirical element of this study is based on the stand-alone social and environmental reports of a sample of 86 cooperative banks (CBs) in Northern Italy; the analysis of these reports indicates that repetition is widespread and that CBs use all forms of repetition, albeit to a varying extent within the different reported themes. The paper contributes to the literature by offering an alternative interpretation of repetition using an interdisciplinary perspective and by providing new insights on social and environmental reporting practices in the cooperative banking sector.

Keywords:

• repetition
• impressions
• narratives
• visuals
• social and environmental reporting
• cooperative banks
• Italy

Acknowledgements

Comments received from colleagues at the 19th Konopka Workshop on Accounting and Management Control (January 2014) and the 26th CSEAR Center for Social and Environmental Accounting Research Conference (September 2014) were extremely useful. A special thank you to the Credito Cooperativo di Brescia, the Banca di Credito Cooperativo di Piove di Sacco, the Banca di Cesena and the Cassa Rurale di Trento which allowed us to reproduce the images contained within their social and environmental reports, thereby showing interest and enthusiasm for our research. Finally, we would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers and the guest editors for their insightful and constructive comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Funding

This paper is published with the support of Euricse (European Research Institute on Cooperative and Social Enterprises).

Notes

1. ‘Repetition is the mother of memory’, ‘Repetition is the mother of study’, ‘Repeating things helps’.

2. To clarify, ‘impression’ in this paper is a concept that is different from ‘impression management’. Whilst the latter is often implied as an organisational intent to manipulate or deceive (for different underlying reasons) using symbolic management techniques (e.g. Merkl-Davies and Brennan 2011), the notion of ‘impressions’ in Hume's work does very much emphasise the learning and knowledge creation ability of communicative devices such as repetition.

3. Davison (2008, p. 814) does, however, make a note of the interplay between words and pictures with a view to emphasise the message.

4. It is crucial to note that Hume (1739) is not referring to the notion of cause and effect in the functionalist sense. In his view, a cause

is an object precedent and contiguous to another and so united with it, that the idea, of the one determines the mind to form the idea of the other, and the impression of the one to form a more lively idea of the other.

It is therefore more appropriate to talk about relations of succession and contiguity (i.e. closeness or proximity) of two objects or events in space and time.

5. We do acknowledge the limitation of comparing empirical results relating to companies vs. not-for-profit organisations.

6. By re-computing the percentages on the basis of the total number of occurrences per theme, the picture changes slightly, with the environment being the less disclosed item compared to all themes and the more repeated one.