This raises a number of possibilities. First, it may be the case that companies do not see social disclosure as a means to close legitimacy gaps with regard to society s perception of their behaviour (a possibility which, admittedly, seems to run counter to much of the research in social and environmental accounting - see for example Deegan and Gordon (1996). In this case, LT is difficult to defend as a possible explanation of social disclosure (the fact that BAT's social disclosure declined over time is evidence in support of this possibility). The supposition that some companies may have used increased social disclosure as a means of legitimation (see especially Patten (1992) does not make this true in all cases. It may simply be that BAT is not motivated by concerns of legitimacy (see Bansal and Roth, 2000)[16],