Presentation of Greenwashing Pattern in the Corporate Reporting: Meta-Synthesis and Shannon Entropy Method

With the development of environmental reporting, the concern about the greenwashing behavior of companies has increased, so the aim of the current research is presenting a pattern of greenwashing phenomenon in corporate reporting. This research is practical in terms of purpose and  it is a meta-synthesis research in terms of the nature of data analysis. For this purpose, by referring to english and persian studies published in reliable databases, in all geographical areas and during the years 1381 to November 1402 (2002 to November 2023), 53 articles were identified with the prisma method, also Shannon's entropy was used to rank the concepts. The validation of the output of the meta-synthesis method has been done using 11 experts who were selected using the snowball sampling method. In the current research, greenwashing pattern is presented using the seven-stage method of Sandelowski and Barroso, this pattern includes 5 main categories (including causal factors, contextual factors, interventing factors, prevention strategies and consequences of greenwashing), 22 concepts and 124 codes. The results also show that in each of the main categories, the motivation to gain legitimacy, the lack of related laws, the existence of institutional shareholders, environmental scandal and promotion of legal mechanisms are the most important. The presented pattern of the current research can be useful for managers and researchers interested in the field of environmental reporting, in order to gain a comprehensive understanding of the concept of greenwashing, to evaluate the importance and weight of each of the components in the greenwashing.