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Public-interest entities – among which are listed companies – are obliged to publish nonfinancial disclosure in some countries and regions. The European Commission established mandatory nonfinancial disclosure by Directive 2014/95/EU. While a large body of literature was developed on sustainability reporting quality (SRQ) in voluntary context, evidence about the effect of mandatory nonfinancial disclosure on SRQ is controversial and previous experiences worldwide did not make clear if obligatoriness improves SRQ. This chapter aims to bridge the gap of empirical evidence about this phenomenon in European countries, focusing on first implementation of new legislation by Italian and German companies. The research has an explorative character and it adopts content analysis methods performed on sustainability reporting practices of companies listed in FTSE-MIB and DAX 30. The analysis aims to understand if obligatoriness affects SRQ, causes some changes in reporting practices such as harmonizing Italian and German ones by performing a cross-country comparison. The findings suggest that obligatoriness improves reporting quality and, above all, it fills the gap between different countries by fostering the adoption of international guidelines and the consequent introduction of some content, such as materiality analysis and quantitative measures of social and environmental performance.

The study examined voluntary disclosure of contributions towards SDG-6 achievement by premium board companies in the Nigerian Stock Exchange. It employed a qualitative research design in which data were collected from the sustainability/annual reports of these companies and subjected to content analysis. The analysis shows overall poor quality as the disclosures are not linked to indicators that can help measure the extent of meeting the UN set target for SDG-6. Two tangible indicators disclosed are water use efficiency and construction of boreholes. However, there is no disclosure of the proportion of the population that gained access to clean water through these initiatives. Similarly, poor quality exists when compliance with GRI-303 on water information disclosure was assessed. The motivation behind the disclosures points to a continuation of their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). The objective is to gain a social licence to operate, and legitimation as opposed to signalling superior SDG-6 performance.

In this chapter, we investigate whether the first-time issuance of a standalone corporate sustainability report led to changes in reputation as measured by Fortune Most Admired scores. Based on a sample of 59 U.S. companies issuing their first standalone sustainability report over the period from 2001 to 2007, and controlling for the financial “halo effect” reported by Brown and Perry (1994), we find, on average no significant changes in reputational scores. However, cross sectional analysis shows that issuing companies from socially exposed industries experienced decreases in scores. Further, report quality, at least at the extremes appears to be positively related to changes in perceived reputation. These results are consistent with Godfrey's (2005) arguments with respect to corporate reputation.

Governance can often be assessed as one part of directing companies’ action toward something better. This study examines how governance quality at the country level and firm level can affect sustainability performance that aligns with sustainable development goals (SDG). Prior academic literature explains that if a country has a low institutional condition, it is a great challenge to implement sustainability. However, the internal awareness of the company to implement sustainability plays an important role as well. To examine the research question, this study uses the banking sector as a research sample with an observation period from 2017 to 2019. Prior literature overlooks research in the banking sector and does not feature country-level governance with firm-level governance. The data were collected either from the annual report or sustainability report, which comprises 141 companies, with the total observation of 423 firm-year. This study used panel data regression analysis and was based on the Hausman Test; it shows that random effect is used to test the hypothesis. This research finds that good quality governance at the country level, results in good sustainability performance. However, contrary to expectations regarding the quality of firm-level governance, which is thought to be positively related to sustainability performance, this study found a negative relationship. The argument that might answer the finding is the existence of governance conditions at the state level and at the firm level that mutually subsidize each other. This research contributes to policymakers continuing to provide counseling and improve institutional conditions to motivate companies to support the achievement of the SDGs. Companies should also pay attention to the effectiveness of their internal governance and strive to use stakeholder opinions as a guide in the realization of SDGs.

This chapter provides a comprehensive investigation of the literature on sustainability reporting in Islamic banks using a content analysis of 200 English language articles published between 2000 and 2023. The data were collected from the Web of Science (WOS) database and analyzed using Bibliometrix in R software. This chapter addresses the trends of the most influential authors, institutions, countries, and research hotspots. This chapter fills one of the gaps in sustainability reporting literature, setting up a statistical description of the principal features of sustainable Islamic banking research and carrying out an analysis of its knowledge structure via bibliometric analysis. This chapter found that the number of articles on sustainability reporting in Islamic banks has increased over time; however, it is concentrated on a few core sources and authors, mostly related to Islamic finance, accounting, and ethics, as well as sustainability and social responsibility. The analysis of the co-authorship network shows a limited degree of collaboration between researchers from different clusters. The most productive and collaborative countries are Malaysia, the United Kingdom, and Pakistan, reflecting their well-developed and regulated Islamic banking industries that follow sustainability guidelines and frameworks. Moreover, the co-word analysis identifies 11 clusters and 43 keywords that represent the main topics and themes in the field, such as corporate governance, performance, disclosure, and risk. This chapter suggests some directions for future research and action on sustainability reporting in Islamic banks. This chapter contributes to the literature on sustainability in Islamic banking and the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Purpose – The chapter aims to analyse specific management tools which can be used to facilitate public governance practices, such as the process of stakeholder involvement.Methodology/approach – By means of both a theoretical discussion and an empirical research conducted on Italian local public utilities (LPUs), the chapter attempts to understand: (a) the degree of application of quality management, sustainability mechanisms and stakeholder's involvement; (b) the correlation between the application of these tools stakeholder involvement processes.Findings – Not all the tools imported from the private sector have the same ‘attitudes’ for stakeholder involvement evidencing a gap of Italian LPUs in quality management systems in ensuring that stakeholders and their contribution to product value is considered. These results give support to the necessity to move beyond New Public Management. Therefore, governance becomes a new process for developing and implementing public policies: this requires original mechanisms of coordination among institutional actors, public authorities and stakeholders.Research limitations/implications – This study gives rise to new research path in LPUs corporate governance research. Looking for the creation of a series of suppositions and considerations as to why LPUs actively venture into the practice of good corporate governance trough stakeholder involvement. Accordingly, it is necessary to invest in the debate on the tasks of the board of directors.Originality/value of paper – This study gives a new path of research, asking board of directors to move toward a stakeholder-conscious governance model, with broader input and ongoing engagement, as an important aspect for a better corporate governance in public administrations.

To achieve sustainable development objectives, managers are encouraged to implement best practices in corporate social and environmental responsibility within their establishments. The main objective of this chapter is to assess the quality of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) communication for Moroccan financial institutions. This chapter is devoted to the content analysis of the annual reports of 14 financial institutions listed in Morocco regarding ESG strategies between 2017 and 2021. The reference assessment tool we used is the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) standards (2016), based on six principles. Each principle contains requirements and guidance on how to apply it. These principles are summarized in the following: Accuracy, Balance, Clarity, Comparability, Reliability, and Timeliness. The sample is composed of 14 financial institutions listed on the Casablanca Stock Exchange. After checking the content of the annual reports of listed Moroccan financial institutions, we detected several shortcomings in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) reporting behavior. Companies avoid disclosing information about negative events and performance. We saw this as a bad sign for stakeholders. The results showed a significant gap between the GRI standards and the content of the annual reports. These weaknesses mainly concern accuracy, comparability, and, timeliness, hence the need to carry out corrective measures to improve the quality of ESG practices within Moroccan financial institutions. One of the limitations of this research is its focus on financial institutions. However, it is possible to broaden the scope of the research by assessing the quality of ESG communication for nonfinancial companies.

Companies are often accused of using sustainability disclosures as public relations tools to manage financial and non-financial stakeholders' impressions. The purpose of our study was firstly to determine how comprehensive the human rights disclosures of a sample of large international companies were and secondly, whether different narrative styles are associated with levels of disclosure to manage readers' impressions about the company. We analysed the public human rights disclosures for 154 large, international companies obtained from the UN Guiding Principles Reporting website. On average, companies complied with only one-third of the UN Guiding Principles Reporting Framework criteria. Communication about policies has the highest compliance, whilst communication about determining which human rights aspects are salient to the company, remedies for transgressions and stakeholder engagement have the lowest disclosure. When we split the sample between high disclosure and low disclosure companies, we found that the readability of the human rights disclosures is exceptionally low and even more so for low disclosure companies. Low disclosure companies used words implying Satisfaction significantly more than high disclosure companies, which provides some support for suspecting that low disclosure companies practise impression management by only presenting a ‘rosy picture’, as well as obfuscation via low readability. We add to the literature on impression management by large corporations in their sustainability reporting, and specifically human rights disclosures, by revealing how the interplay of low disclosure, low readability and overuse of words signalling Satisfaction contributes to impression management, rather than sincere attempts at accountability to all stakeholders.

Nowadays, social and environmental reporting is approached in different ways, paths and fields by either large-, small-, or medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). However, as demonstrated by previous scholars, SMEs have been critically discussed because they provide lack of proper sustainability disclosure. The fact that the predominant approach of SMEs toward social responsibility is often “sunken” and not “explicit” can drive the lack of disclosure. Furthermore, unstructured communication practices create difficulties in measuring and reporting the sustainability reporting phenomenon in SMEs. The aim of our study is to shed light on the activity of SMEs’ sustainability reporting and disclosure, specifically, by addressing the variables that influence the choice of the guidelines used to prepare sustainability reports.

The research has been carried out by using qualitative and quantitative methodologies. The empirical evidence is based on all the Italian companies, mostly SMEs, that were certified in 2011 as having adopted both environmental (i.e., ISO14001 or EMAS) and social (i.e., SA8000) management systems. A multivariate linear regression model has been developed to address the influence of several variables (i.e., financial performance, size, time after achievement of the certifications, group/conglomerate control, etc.) on the guidelines’ choice for preparing sustainability reports.

Our findings demonstrate that SMEs prefer to use simple guidelines such as those guidelines that are mandatory under management system certifications. However, the sustainability disclosure driven by the adoption of international guidelines may be more complex if the SME is controlled within a group of companies or if a significant amount of time has passed since the certification date. As such, we developed a taxonomy of their different behavioral drivers according to a legitimacy theory approach.

At this stage, our study didn’t focus on the contents’ quality of the disclosure and reporting practices adopted by SMEs, which is obviously a worthwhile and important area for further research. Furthermore, the analysis took into account the impact of a number of easily accessible variables; therefore, it can be extended to investigate the effect on disclosure of other relevant variables (i.e., nature of the board of directors, age, and industrial sector in which the company operates) as well as contexts prevailing in other countries.

The study represents an important contribution for understanding how and why managers might use externally focused disclosure on social and environmental issues to benefit the company’s legitimacy.

Our study provides interesting insights for policy makers who require social or environmental certification when calling for tenders or specific EU contracts, in order to put aside the “brand” or “symbol” and really focus on the disclosed practices.

Previous studies have provided only a few evidence about reporting practices and related influencing features of SMEs’ sustainability actions. As such, the study wishes to make a significant contribution to the existing literature on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) by providing relevant insights about the factors which influence the guidelines used by SMEs in preparing their sustainability reports.