Legitimacy Theory, Stakeholder Salience, and Corporate Sustainability Disclosure: A Critical Realist Investigation of Nigerian Multinationals

This study investigates the mechanisms through which legitimacy theory and stakeholder salience dynamics shape corporate sustainability disclosure practices in Nigerian multinationals, employing a critical realist philosophical framework that enables the examination of deep structures and generative mechanisms beyond descriptive patterns. Existing sustainability disclosure research in Nigeria is predominantly descriptive and cross-sectional, leaving unexamined the causal mechanisms through which legitimacy pressures are internalised, negotiated, or strategically deployed by multinationals operating in Nigeria's complex stakeholder environment. A retroductive research design is employed, combining content analysis of sustainability reports from 30 multinationals over eight years with abductive interview analysis of 55 sustainability directors, investor relations officers, and community liaison managers across South South and South West geopolitical operations. The study identifies three generative mechanisms: legitimacy repair disclosure triggered by operational controversies, stakeholder salience-driven disclosure escalation, and institutional isomorphism-based disclosure mimicry. Critically, the research reveals that disclosure quality varies not with report comprehensiveness but with the internal institutionalisation depth of sustainability values, a distinction invisible to content-analytic approaches alone. This study makes original contributions to sustainability disclosure theory by operationalising critical realism within the African multinational context, generating transferable theoretical propositions with explanatory power beyond the Nigerian case. Keywords: legitimacy theory, stakeholder salience, sustainability disclosure, multinationals, critical realism.