The Association between Sustainability Governance Characteristics and the Assurance of Corporate Sustainability Reports

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gary F. Peters ◽  
Andrea M. Romi
Keyword(s):  
Corporate Sustainability ◽  
Sustainability Governance ◽  
Sustainability Reports

scholarly journals The Governance of Corporate Sustainability in the Middle East: Preliminary Insights

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 715-731
Author(s):  
Zeeshan Mahmood ◽  
Maha Faisal Alsayegh
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Best Practices ◽  
Corporate Sustainability ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Governance Structures ◽  
Business Practices ◽  
Sustainability Strategies ◽  
Sustainability Governance ◽  
Sustainability Reports ◽  
Board Level

This paper explores the extent to which companies incorporate best practices for the governance of sustainability in the Middle East. The empirical content in this paper is based on the analysis of company’s disclosures in the annual and sustainability reports of fifteen companies from the Middle East that are listed in the S&P/Hawkamah Pan Arab ESG Index. The research presented in this paper shed the light on some of the practices currently being employed in Middle Eastern companies to govern and manage their sustainability strategies. This study found that top Middle Eastern companies are catching up the global best practices in incorporating sustainability into some structures and processes. However, sustainability governance structures and processes where middle eastern companies are lagging include sustainability committee at board-level, sustainability related mission, vision and values, sustainability assurance, sustainability related trainings and separate sustainability department. In addition, this paper provide several illustrations of how top middle eastern companies are exhibiting sustainability governance structures and processes in their sustainability reports. This information can be used to better understand the state of play of sustainability governance in the middle east and can inform the policy makers for the possibility of regulation in this area. This research is equally beneficial for companies and managers in benchmarking their practices against sustainability leaders and to learn how to embed sustainability into their business practices.    

The Association between Sustainability Governance Characteristics and the Assurance of Corporate Sustainability Reports

2014 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 163-198 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gary F. Peters ◽  
Andrea M. Romi
Keyword(s):  
Value Relevance ◽  
Corporate Sustainability ◽  
Accounting Firms ◽  
Internal Auditors ◽  
Corporate Governance Mechanisms ◽  
Assurance Services ◽  
The Board Of Directors ◽  
Contextual Characteristics ◽  
Sustainability Reports ◽  
Sustainability Report

SUMMARY This study provides evidence on whether sustainability-oriented corporate governance mechanisms impact the voluntary assurance of corporate sustainability reports. Specifically, we consider the presence and characteristics of environmental committees on the Board of Directors and a Chief Sustainability Officer (CSO) among the management team. When examining assurance services, we make a distinction between those services performed by professional accountants, consultants, and internal auditors. We find that the presence of a CSO is positively associated with corporate sustainability report assurance services, and this association increases when the CSO has sustainability expertise. Supporting the position that some firms establish sustainability-related governance merely to conform to socially desired behavior, we find that only those environmental committees containing directors with related expertise influence the likelihood of adopting sustainability assurance. Presently, environmental committees with greater expertise appear to prefer the higher-quality assurance services of professional accounting firms. Expert CSOs, on the other hand, prefer assurance services from their peers with sustainability expertise, as evidenced by their choice to employ consultants. When analyzing firms' environmental contextual characteristics, we find that firms employing a CSO and exhibiting poor environmental performance, relative to other firms in their industry, prefer to report sustainability results without assurance. While we do find that larger firms in the U.S. are significantly less likely to employ assurance, this result decreases over time. Further, we provide initial evidence that the value-relevance of sustainability assurance is increasing with time.

Corporate Sustainability Indicators In Banking Sector

2014 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 581-584
Author(s):  
Dumitrascu Mihaela ◽  
Ileana Ciutacu ◽  
Iulian Vasile Săvulescu
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Content Analysis ◽  
Banking Sector ◽  
Corporate Sustainability ◽  
Sustainability Indicators ◽  
Global Reporting Initiative ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Group Level ◽  
Industry Sector ◽  
Sustainability Reports

AbstractThe purpose of this paper is to see the situation regarding the indicators from the Sustainability Reports. For this we use a qualitative research, a content analysis of these reports. Our sample is composed by the banks that develop their activity in our country for which we analysed the last year reports at group level. We choose only an industry sector to obtain the homogeneity of the sample. The findings reveal a number of 86 indicators, which were used in these reports. We analyzed the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) indicators used by 12 companies. The most reported indicators are EN4, EN8, LA1, LA10, while the last reported indicators are E5, E10 E13 E15, EN20, EN21, EN23, EN27, HR9, HR10 The results obtained are important for future research in this area, for both managers and researchers.

Characteristics of UK higher education institutions that disclose sustainability reports

2018 ◽  
Vol 19 (7) ◽  
pp. 1279-1298 ◽  
Author(s):  
Remmer Sassen ◽  
Dominik Dienes ◽  
Johanna Wedemeier
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Higher Education Institutions ◽  
Research Question ◽  
Corporate Sustainability ◽  
Public Funding ◽  
Sustainability Reporting ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Sustainability Reports ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Uk Higher Education

Purpose This study aims to focus on the following research question: Which institutional characteristics are associated with sustainability reporting by UK higher education institutions? Design/methodology/approach To answer the aforementioned research question, this study uses logistic regression. Findings The results show that 17 per cent of the UK higher education institutions report on their sustainability (July 2014). In line with legitimacy and stakeholder theory, logistic regressions provide evidence that the larger the size of the institution, the higher the probability of reporting. By contrast, high public funding decreases this probability. Research limitations/implications The findings show characteristics of higher education institutions that support or hamper sustainability reporting. Overall, the findings imply a lack of institutionalisation of sustainability reporting among higher education institutions. Originality/value Although a lot of research has been done on corporate sustainability reporting, only a small number of studies have addressed the issues of sustainability reporting of higher education institutions. This study covers all sustainability reports disclosed among the 160 UK higher education institutions. It is the first study that investigates characteristics of higher education institutions that disclose a sustainability report.

scholarly journals The Use of Corporate Sustainability Indices : A Case Study on the Dow Jones Sustainability Index

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Doaa Mohammed Elkhawas
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Corporate Sustainability ◽  
Socially Responsible ◽  
Responsible Investment ◽  
Sustainability Index ◽  
Dow Jones Sustainability Index ◽  
Sustainability Reports ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
Sustainability Indices

Corporations are under growing pressure from socially responsible investors to consider the environmental and social impacts of their operations. To help highlight corporations that have taken steps to address these issues, a number of sustainability indices have been developed. While there is a growing body of literature that focuses on sustainability indices, little is known on how they are used in practice. The purpose of this project was to explore the use of sustainability indices in corporations. In this project, the Dow Jones Sustainability Index North America (DJSINA) was used in a case study. The project consisted of three key phases: a content analysis of corporate sustainability reports in North America, a survey with Canadian experts on the DJSINA, and a review of the DJSI website. The project highlights the similarities and differences in the use of the DJSI by Canadian and American corporations. As the first study focusing on the use of the DJSINA, the results will be of interest to practitioners and academics in socially responsible investment and corporate sustainability.

scholarly journals Sustainability with (out) compromise: how companies perceive, manage, and communicate trade-off decisions in the practice of corporate sustainability

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Merriam Haffar
Keyword(s):  
Content Analysis ◽  
Corporate Sustainability ◽  
Phase Iii ◽  
Strategic Choices ◽  
Trade Off ◽  
Organizational Cognition ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Archival Documents ◽  
Sustainability Reports ◽  
Latent Content

The practice of corporate sustainability is beset with compromise; it involves inevitable trade-offs across competing objectives and across a range of stakeholders and time horizons. These trade-offs create tension points that present the company with strategic choices that ultimately shape its overall approach to sustainability. Accordingly, trade-offs constitute a material aspect of a company’s sustainability practice, and ought to be disclosed in sustainability reports. The purpose of this research is therefore to understand how companies perceive, manage, and report on these critical trade-off decisions in the practice of sustainability. To achieve this objective, this dissertation conducted a study in three phases. In Phase I, this study conducted a review and content analysis of the trade-off literature through the lens of the natural resource-based view of the firm. Through this process, this study proposed a hierarchical framework for the analysis of trade-offs based on their root tensions, their interconnections, and their connection to sustainability synergies. In Phase II, this study used an organizational cognition perspective to posit that companies perceive and respond to these trade-off decisions in ways that reflect the company’s underlying sustainability logic. To explore this link, this study performed a content analysis of interviews with sustainability managers, as well as archival documents. This study found that companies with an instrumental logic saw trade-offs as binary and resolved them by counterbalancing the ‘lose’ dimension with ‘wins’ elsewhere. In contrast, companies with an integrative logic saw trade-offs as non-binary, and resolved them through an iterative, risk-based approach. Finally, in Phase III, this study used a legitimacy perspective to determine whether companies are disclosing these trade-offs in their sustainability reports. To do so, this study analyzed sustainability reports and interviews with sustainability managers using content analysis. This study found that 92% of all reporting companies had encountered sustainability trade-offs but had not disclosed them in their reports. Evidence of these accounts were nevertheless present in the implicit (or latent) content of the reports. These findings highlight the negative light in which many companies perceive trade-offs, and the legitimacy threat that their disclosure poses.

Impression Management in Sustainability Reports: An Empirical Investigation of the Use of Graphs

2012 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 16-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles H. Cho ◽  
Giovanna Michelon ◽  
Dennis M. Patten
Keyword(s):  
Public Relations ◽  
Impression Management ◽  
Environmental Performance ◽  
Social Performance ◽  
Corporate Sustainability ◽  
Sustainability Reporting ◽  
Environmental Disclosure ◽  
Social And Environmental Disclosure ◽  
Sustainability Reports ◽  
Social And Environmental Performance

ABSTRACT The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether firms use graphs in their sustainability reports in order to present a more favorable view of their social and environmental performance. Further, because prior research indicates that companies use social and environmental disclosure as a tool to reduce their exposure to social and political pressures (the legitimacy argument), we also examine whether differences in the extent of impression management are associated with differences in social and environmental performance. Based on an analysis of graphs in sustainability reports for a sample of 77 U.S. companies for 2006, we find considerable evidence of favorable selectivity bias in the choice of items graphed, and moderate evidence that where distortion in graphing occurs, it also has a favorable bias. Our results regarding the relation between impression management and performance are mixed. Whereas we find that graphs of social items in sustainability reports for companies with worse social performance exhibit more impression management, no significant relation between environmental performance and impression management in the use of environmental graphs is found. Overall, our results provide additional evidence that corporate sustainability reporting, as it currently exists, appears to be more about fostering positive public relations than providing a meaningful accounting of the social and environmental impacts of the firm.

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