Reliability of corporate environmental reports produced by listed South African companies

The aim of this research is to evaluate the reliability of environmental reports produced by the Top 100 listed South African (T100LSA) companies. A content analysis of environmental reports contained in the Integrated Annual Reports (IARs), sustainability reports and companies’ corporate websites was conducted using a control list. The findings of the study reveal that in general, the environmental reports produced by the T100LSA companies are reliable as most companies’ reports have a statement from the top management, describe the organization’s structures in place at various levels to deal with environmental matters, as well as the initiatives undertaken to mitigate environmental impacts. In addition, most companies disclose their external recognition for environmental achievement or their involvement with external parties on environmental matters. Furthermore, most of the companies’ reports contain third party commentary and indicate that the companies have adopted the best practice in environmental performance management and reporting. Besides, most companies report in a balanced manner including both positive and negative information pertaining to risks faced and the opportunities missed or seized, as well as their environmental policy, mission, objectives and strategies. However, there was a need for improvement, as only a half of the companies’ environmental reports had an assurance statement from an independent party, which mostly failed to indicate the procedures performed by the assuror

Relevance of corporate environmental reports produced by listed South African companies

The broad aim of this research is to assess the relevance of environmental reports produced by the Top 100 listed South African (T100LSA) companies. The study is motivated by a lack of research on the relevance of environmental reports in South Africa, given the dramatic increase in the number of companies producing these reports as well as the expansion of the volumes of the reports produced. A content analysis of environmental reports contained in the Integrated Annual Reports (IARs), sustainability reports and companies’ corporate websites is conducted using a control list. The findings of the study reveal that in general, the environmental reports produced by the T100LSA companies are relevant as most companies have disclosed how they select stakeholders for engagement, their methods of engagement, engagement process and outcomes and how content reported on is selected. In addition, the companies have disclosed how they address and respond to key stakeholders’ concerns as well as their initiatives to encourage stakeholders to participate in the companies’ activities. Furthermore the companies disclose their general performance indicators. However, there is a need for improvement in the disclosure of metric to quantify the effectiveness of the stakeholder engagement and reference to GRI sector specific indicators when selecting content to report on. More importantly, there is a need to improve on the use of on-line features to enhance relevance of the reports such as encouraging users to be part of the writing process by enabling them to edit, analyze and share the reported information, and tracking their use of on-line reports

Users’ perception of decision-usefulness of corporate environmental reports

This article aims to investigate the users’ perception of decision-usefulness of environmental reports produced by listed South African companies. The results of this questionnaire survey indicate that the users do read environmental reports, and that they employ the reports for making various decisions for various purposes such as education or research, own knowledge and to hold companies accountable. In addition, environmental reports are also used, to a lesser extent, to decide whether or not to; buy a company’s products, invest or disinvest from a company, partner with a company, support or launch action against a company. The results further indicate that users generally perceive environmental reports to be useful for the purpose which they were used, as most users perceive them to be understandable and relevant, and to a lesser extent reliable, timely, verifiable and comparable. The results also reveal that most users are not satisfied with the decision-usefulness of the environmental reports. They thus provide various suggestions for improvement of the reports, most of which focus on the reliability and relevance of the reports. Taken together, the results indicate that users perceive the environmental reports produced by listed South Africa companies to be decision-useful, however there is a need for improvement of the reports particularly regarding their reliability