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The purpose of this paper is to critically examine the tension between rule-breaking and legitimacy for entrepreneurs, who are expected to challenge and change social or business norms. In doing so, they may be presented as heroes in the media, or alternatively, are cast out as villains with attendant negative press with consequent loss of legitimacy.

Through secondary data methods, the paper analyses the case of Vance Miller, an entrepreneur from the North of England who has achieved economic success amid reports of alleged criminality and poor ethical behaviour. Thus he spans rule-breaking and legitimacy.

The paper illustrates how rule-breaking directed towards demonstrable entrepreneurial achievement does not always result in media legitimacy. Miller’s storyline both chimes with and clashes with the discourse of the enterprise culture, providing a cautionary note for aspirant entrepreneurs.

The hero-villain paradox remains relatively unexplored in the media, and thus further qualitative research is required, particularly for aspirant entrepreneurs with controversial or criminal backgrounds.

Entrepreneurs should question carefully the extent and potential consequences of rule breaking in regard to legitimacy.

The paper highlights and indeed questions the role of the media in their representations of entrepreneurship, and challenges the valorisation of rule-breaking behaviour by entrepreneurs.

The paper makes a distinctive contribution to the literature by examining the relation between rule-breaking and legitimacy for an entrepreneur who is represented negatively in the media, yet remains successful, counter to the heroic stereotype.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate rationales for integrated reporting (<IR>) adoption and factors that impact on the extent of adoption in the UK early adopter organisations. Diffusion of innovation theory was used as a guiding theoretical lens

The study was based on in-depth semi-structured interviews with 36 senior executives actively involved in IR in finance, sustainability, communications and legal functions within seventeen organisations. A content analysis of the interviews was undertaken using qualitative coding techniques within Nvivo 11 software.

Organisations drew on a wide range of rationales for adoption, with a predominance of sociological over economic rationales, both of which offered organisations a relative advantage over existing practices. Economically, <IR> emerged as an incremental process, which filled a performance gap is predominantly manufacturing and utility industries with significant impacts on the environment/society. Predominant sociological rationales were: external pressures, primarily due to perceptions of shifts in societal expectations; and internal aspirations relating to enhancing reputation. Findings also revealed that the <IR> framework was not fully adopted by the majority of organisations, primarily due to incompatibility with organisational requirements and/or perceived complexity of the framework.

This research study was limited by the small sample of organisations that participated, although significant efforts were made to ensure that the sample incorporated the majority of early adopter UK organisations who demonstrated best practice in <IR>.

Recommendations on how the adoption of <IR> may be further enhanced in the future are outlined.

Research that provides recommendations to inform policy and practice regarding how <IR> could be more widely adopted, and its practices further diffused, within organisations is important given <IR> has the potential to contribute to societal and environmental well-being.

This study is significant as research into <IR> adoption decision motivations and subsequent extent of adoption is scant, particularly in the UK. It responds to the call by Dumay et al. (2016) for <IR> researchers to engage more with practice. It further enriches prior research on the adoption of management innovations where an extensive body of innovation literature has focussed on the rationale for organisational adoption of management innovations but has neglected the subsequent extent of adoption.

The purpose of this paper is to seek to improve how companies map their environment in order to identify the social norms and values that exist in relation to corporate social responsibility (CSR).

A theoretical discussion is accompanied by a short case study that includes analysis of ten sustainability reports published by the oil company Shell.

The mapping tools recommended in the literature of management and public relations have limitations. There are also weaknesses in the way that Shell, a supposed leader in the CSR movement, maps its environment. The public sphere concept is suggested as a fruitful supplement.

More in‐depth case studies accompanied with qualitative interviews are needed to back up the conclusions put forward.

The norms, values and expectations regarding CSR are not fixed entities, and it is thus vital for organisations to engage in ongoing listening and dialogue to keep abreast of these changing factors. Companies have to attempt to be well informed and well read participants in civic society. Conceptualizing their environments as made up of stakeholders and a public sphere, can help in this endeavour.

The paper points to the limitation of current environmental mapping tools, and discusses how such mapping exercises can be improved.

Food—national dietary standards—is a sensitive index of socio‐economic conditions generally; there are others, reflecting different aspects, but none more sensitive. A country that eats well has healthy, robust people; the housewife who cooks hearty, nourishing meals has a lusty, virile family. It is not surprising, therefore, that all governments of the world have a food policy, ranking high in its priorities and are usually prepared to sacrifice other national policies to preserve it. Before the last war, when food was much less of an instrument of government policy than now—there were not the shortages or the price vagaries—in France, any government, whatever its colour, which could not keep down the price of food so that the poor man ate his fill, never survived long; it was—to make use of the call sign of those untidy, shambling columns from our streets which seem to monopolize the television news screens—“out!” Lovers of the Old France would say that the country had been without stable government since 1870, but the explanation for the many changes in power in France in those pre‐war days could be expressed in one word—food!