Affiliations: [a] Utrecht School of Governance, University of Utrecht,
Utrecht, The Netherlands | [b] Utrecht Institute of Linguistics OTS, Utrecht
University, Utrecht, The Netherlands | Faculty of Business Administration, Information
Systems Department, Université Laval, PQ, Canada | Fundacion Universidad de las Americas Puebla, Business
School, Santa Catarina Martir, San Andres Cholula, Puebla, Mexico | Graduate School of Management, Clark University,
Worcester, MA, USA
Correspondence:
[*]
Corresponding author: Albert Meijer, Utrecht School of
Governance, University of Utrecht, Bijlhouwerstraat 6, NL3511ZC Utrecht, The
Netherlands. E-mail: a.j.meijer@uu.nl
Abstract: Disclosure of information is an increasingly popular policy
instrument. While the use of disclosed information by consumers has been
studied, little is known the disclosure practices of organizations. The central
question in this paper is: how do organizations translate the trade-off between
legal and communicative quality into an organizational arrangement for the
production of client communication products? Scholars suggest that the
translation of this trade-off into organizational practices is influenced by
the perception of the regulatory environment. We present an empirical study of
24 pension funds in the Netherlands to investigate this issue. Our findings
falsify the expected relations between perceptions of the environment and
organizational arrangements for client communication practices. Instead, this
study highlights that a hybrid organizational arrangement for communicating
with clients is the modus operandi for most organizations as it is an
attractive way of integrating both legal and communicative expertise.
