This paper intends to examine the legitimacy of the dual strategic objectives (financial and social) of state-owned companies and how these objectives are reflected in the corporate governance, social responsibility and transparency practices of these companies. We provide evidence of the legitimacy of this pursuit of dual objectives and that it involves compliance with a variety of different types of corporate social responsibility. Analyzing the information provided on three corporate websites of Petrobras, we identified transparency practices and their association both with isomorphic legitimating mechanisms and with the achievement of dual institutional objectives. Findings reveal that the information provided on the websites is aligned to both types of institutional goals, that transparency practices reflect isomorphic pressures (being coercive, normative and mimetic), and that the profile of isomorphic pressures differs depending on the type of social responsibility and intended audience. This paper also shows that threats to transparency practices and to legitimacy itself may arise from new demands from stakeholders, perhaps deriving from new possibilities for the use of open data available on the websites.
Strategic Objectives; State-owned Companies; Corporate Social Responsibility; Transparency Practices; Legitimacy
