Purpose – This paper aims to explore how organizations use annual reporting for legitimacy purposes in the context of the ten recently privatised regional water companies in the UK. Although privatization required the water plcs to establish a distinctly different organizational legitimacy for...

Purpose – Accounting and water industry experts are developing general‐purpose water accounting (GPWA) to report information about water and rights to water. The system has the potential to affect water policies, pricing and management, and investment and other decisions that are affected by...

Senior management in the newly privatized water companies have been keen to secure employee commitment to the new commercial goals they are ow pursuing. Considers the use of profit sharing as a rhetorical device for this purpose. The introduction of profit sharing schemes was intended by...

The water industry was one of a number of publicly owned enterprises and assets which were privatized during the 1980s in the UK. The Government justified its privatization programme on a number of grounds. In particular, it claimed that privatization would improve industrial performance by...

Purpose – The study seeks to add to the understanding of the diffusion and decline of environmental reporting practices. Design/methodology/approach – Semi-structured interviews and municipal water utility publications are analysed to identify factors which have influenced the diffusion and...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate how benchmarking affects transparency and economic performance in the public sector. Design/methodology/approach – The paper applies a quasi‐experimental method to 1989‐2000 time series data on benchmarking and non‐benchmarking...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to develop a suitable benchmarking framework that encompasses multiple criteria of sustainable water supply services for assessing the performance of select North Indian urban water utilities and also to arrive at potential for input reductions (or...

A case study is described in which an audit programme was developed as a measure of health and safety performance. The audit programme was implemented as a safety competition in a UK water utility over a period of three years with the results also used for benchmarking the company’s health and...

Purpose – The purpose of this article is to analyse the organisation of the Bolivian “water war” in Cochabamba that saw a social movement resist international business and the privatisation of public goods. The implications for the study of resistance in management and organisation studies...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the intentional formation of business networks in the wastewater industry. It enriches the theory‐building of the formation of business networks by drawing on theoretical contributions to business networks and capabilities. The paper...