Ticking the Boxes or Transforming Business? The Performative Role of Consultants in Sustainability Reporting

Abstract

The growing complexity of sustainability reporting especially under the European Union’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) has made consultants central to how organizations interpret and implement reporting requirements. While prior research has examined both drivers for sustainability reporting and the growing role of consultants in shaping corporate practices, little is known about how consultants shape the sustainability reporting and strategic alignment through the Double Materiality Assessment (DMA) mandated by the CSRD. This study investigates how consultants facilitate and shape sustainability reporting through DMA. It identifies three distinct consultancy approaches: client-led, consultant-led and collaborative-led, all of which result in similar compliance-oriented outputs. More notably, the study highlights a recurring inconsistency between talk, decisions, and actions, performed through the roles and interactions of both consultants and clients. Drawing on Brunson's (1993;1986) theory of organizational hypocrisy and Gond et al. (2016) theory of performativity, the study shows that consultants do not merely manage tensions between talk and action, they perform legitimacy. Through structured validation, strategic framing and reporting rituals, consultants help produce the appearance of sustainability alignment, even when internal transformation is limited. This extends Brunsson’s model of organizational hypocrisy by demonstrating that hypocrisy is not only a strategic response but a performative outcome performed by consultants through their roles. Highlighting the performative dimensions of consultancy work, this thesis contributes to both sustainability reporting research and organizational hypocrisy theory. It raises important questions about the credibility of reporting practices and emphasizes the need to examine not only what sustainability reports claim, but how those claims are constructed in practice.