BEYOND SUSTAINABILITY REPORTING: UNDERSTANDING GREENWASHING, LEGITIMACY MANAGEMENT, AND CORPORATE ACCOUNTABILITY IN INDONESIAN NON-FINANCIAL STATE-OWNED ENTERPRISES

Corporate sustainability reporting plays an important role in communicating environmental commitments, operational performance, and accountability to stakeholders. However, understanding corporate environmental responsibility requires examining the relationship between reported sustainability claims and relevant operational evidence. This study explores environmental sustainability reporting practices in four Indonesian state-owned and state-controlled enterprises: PT Pertamina Geothermal Energy Tbk (PGE), PT PLN (Persero), PT Pertamina Hulu Energi (PHE), and PT Pertamina Gas (Pertagas), covering the 2020–2024 reporting period. Using a qualitative multiple-case study design, the research employs document analysis and evidence triangulation to examine four environmental themes: emissions and climate change at PGE, energy and energy transition at PLN, water and waste management at PHE, and biodiversity and local environmental impacts at Pertagas. The analysis is informed by Legitimacy Theory and Stakeholder Theory, with Institutional Theory providing additional context for understanding corporate responses to environmental expectations. Preliminary documentary evidence identifies relevant environmental initiatives and operational indicators, including geothermal electricity production, renewable-energy capacity, reported emission reductions, water-intensity management, and biodiversity conservation programs. The findings highlight the importance of distinguishing environmental commitments and reported activities from measurable outcomes and of considering reporting boundaries, indicator definitions, and methodological consistency when interpreting sustainability disclosures. The study contributes to qualitative research on corporate environmental accountability by presenting a comparative framework for examining the relationship between sustainability narratives and operational evidence. The conclusions remain subject to verification through systematic extraction and comparison of the complete set of corporate reports and relevant external sources across the observation period.