Abstract
The growing importance of social sustainability fosters firms to communicate their social impact, e.g., through environmental, social, and governance (ESG) reporting. Unfortunately, firms’ actions are often not consistent with their communication. When action and communication on social sustainability are incongruent, social washing emerges. This paper aims to provide an exploratory analysis, based on multiple case studies, to investigate the dimensions and practices of social washing in architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) firms. The results reveal that the main social washing practices in AEC are misleading assessment of impacts, cherry-picking, inadequate or absent involvement of the local community, and concealment of modern slavery. We propose a framework for operationalizing the analysis of social washing practices in AEC firms. Finally, we provide an overview of the dimensions and practices of social washing, laying the groundwork for future studies on the topic.
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Data Availability Statement
Some or all data, models, or code generated or used during the study are available from the corresponding author by request.
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Journal of Management in Engineering
Volume 41 • Issue 1 • January 2025
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© 2024 American Society of Civil Engineers.
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Received: Dec 20, 2023
Accepted: Jul 12, 2024
Published online: Oct 7, 2024
Published in print: Jan 1, 2025
Discussion open until: Mar 7, 2025
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