Materiality in sustainability accounting : a critical realist perspective

This thesis extends the existing understanding of materiality in sustainability accounting by interrogating it from a critical realism perspective. A consolidated conceptualization of heterogeneous stakeholder materiality (HSM) is constructed by applying Bhaskar’s (1975, 2008) model for the logic of scientific discovery. Empirical studies from different settings endorse an effective explanation to the context-specific materiality phenomenon, informing how the HSM mechanism can be confirmed or distorted, and how it transfactually operates in the observable and unobservable domains. This research advances materiality understanding from theoretical and practical perspectives, and enriches methodology literature with a critical realism research account.