Philip Dickemann

2026

This study applies qualitative content analysis to 80 annual reports from STOXX Europe 600 constituents across ten European countries. A two-dimensional inclusion criterion (Scope 2 substantive relevance and interpretive framing content) yielded 185 qualifying passages. Inductive coding produced nine framing categories, which were cross-tabulated with a three-level additionality acknowledgement score to build a per-company profile matrix. The analysis is framed by legitimacy theory and impression management.
The study finds that 78.8% of companies make no acknowledgement of the additionality gap,
15.0% acknowledge it implicitly, and only 6.3% acknowledge it explicitly. A three-part empirical typology emerges: Unreflective Attribution, Sophisticated Non-Acknowledgement (the most common profile), as well as Acknowledging and Complex. The typology systematically shows that acknowledgement does not occur without disclosure sophistication. Within the acknowledging group, a further divergence appears between an accountability-oriented mode that treats additionality as a limitation of the standard, and a legitimation-oriented mode that treats it as a corporate achievement. The analysis is cross-sectional, single-coder and confined to annual reports from ten European markets. Multi-year, multi-region and multi-channel replications would test the robustness of the typology. The findings are directly relevant to the 2025 GHG Protocol Scope 2 revision and to the design of mandatory disclosure under CSRD/ESRS and IFRS S2. Mandatory qualitative disclosure of instrument additionality would disrupt the structural silence documented here.