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The objective of this chapter is to analyse the impact of France’s ‘Grenelle 2’ law of 2010, which applies to environmental accounting disclosures (EADs). More specifically, it seeks to observe whether the ‘Anglo-Saxon’ ‘comply or explain’ model, transposed into the French regulatory framework, influences the disclosure strategies of firms that are listed on a regulated market.

Drawing on the theoretical framework of legitimacy and the concept of normativity, an empirical study is conducted on a sample of 96 French firms listed on the SBF index between 2009 and 2014. The effect of regulation is assessed by a content analysis of EAD in annual reports, examining changes in disclosure practices and the contents of disclosures.

The main results show that explanations for the absence of EAD showed a significant increase after the introduction of the law. We also observe that the new rules had no effect on the number of firms making EADs, although the quality of the disclosures declined. Finally, the results also concern practices of non-disclosure without any accompanying explanation.

The limitations of this study relate to the choices underlying the classifications and observations made during the content analysis.

This study has social relevance in that it supplies information for assessing the transposition of European directives into French law.

This study extends research concerning environmental disclosures by examining a recent accounting object. It also continues the debate on normativity, with its analysis of disclosures subject to a changing regulatory framework.

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.

Many organizational efforts to improve co-worker relationships entail inducing employees to bring their “whole selves” into the workplace, which for employees often means disclosing personal experiences at work. Several psychological theories suggest that increased self-disclosure will lead to better relationships in organizational work groups. However, this chapter considers the factors impacting self-disclosure in demographically diverse settings. We posit that although self-disclosure has led to closer relationships in past research, it may not increase cohesion for employees in demographically diverse work groups, or those who are demographically dissimilar from the majority of their co-workers.

This chapter evaluates whether disclosures on global warming by companies from the European Union are more extensive than disclosures by Japanese and Canadian firms. The study is based on disclosures made on websites, annual reports, social, environmental and sustainability reports and on a questionnaire developed by the Carbon Disclosure Project by 282 of the largest firms from these countries. Content analysis is utilized to asses their disclosures. The results indicate that the EU firms make significantly less global warming disclosures than firms from Japan or Canada. We also find no relation between the changes in carbon emissions and global warming disclosures indicating that these disclosures do not truly reflect emission performance. These findings suggest that the EU requirements of reducing GHG pollution have not improved GHG disclosures. Regulatory disclosure requirements may be the answer to improve disclosures.

Purpose – This study investigates the status of related party disclosure in an emerging economy, that is, India. The reason behind concentrating on India is due to its opening of the economy in 1991 to attract foreign investment. Hence, it is significant that investors are provided with credible information. The accounting value of ‘secrecy’ underlying India and the voluntary nature of detailed reporting about related parties in this country further motivated the present study.

Methodology/Approach – The research method includes a content analysis of the ‘related party disclosure’ section of annual reports of a sample of Indian companies for the financial years 2002–2006.

Findings – Indian companies disclosed more than the required minimum level of related party disclosure as required in the Indian accounting standard. No association between related party disclosure with market capitalization, industry affiliation and foreign listing was found for the year 2006. However, when the scores of all the five years 2002–2006 were considered manufacturing and automotive companies disclosed more about related parties than diversified, service and technology.

Research Limitations – The limitations of our findings rests upon the fact that we have not examined the effect of factors such as the composition of management of each company and the presence of Indians/Non-Indians in management.

Originality/Value of the Paper – Most studies exploring disclosure practices are directed towards developed countries. The disclosure practices in developing countries is an under researched area. This paper contributes towards the existing literature by taking the case of an emerging economy, that is, India.

Banks are intermediary institutions that play an important role in accelerating economic growth. Therefore, banks need to implement policies to improve the efficiency and quality of digital finance, namely through the Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL), which developed amid Society 5.0. However, the application of XBRL does not completely rule out the possibility of information asymmetry. Therefore, this study aims to analyze the effect of Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) on asymmetric information with corporate disclosure as a moderating variable (expected to reduce information asymmetry) and analyze the effect of XBRL and control variables (size, turnover, stock price) on information asymmetry. The sample used is conventional banks that have been listed on the IDX and are not delisted, from 2015, since the implementation of XBRL until 2019 using the panel data regression method. The results obtained are that information asymmetry decreases with the application of XBRL, where corporate disclosure is a moderating variable. For the results of the control variable, the larger the size, the less information asymmetry and turnover. As for the stock price, the higher the stock price, the higher the information asymmetry.

Despite the expected benefits to stakeholders, as well as the number of contributes aiming at identifying and proposing best practices on the integrated reporting (IR) adoption, it seems that the IR struggles to be diffused in companies. Several are the reasons explaining this evidence. It could mainly be the consequence of some critical issues underlying IR implementation, such as difficulties in the complete application of the IR framework.

Strictly related to this last aspect is the topic of the IR quality that recently has begun to gain interest both in the literature and in the empirical research. Particularly, the issues of IR quality and its determinants now appear to be more important than the IR quantity.

Starting from these premises, this chapter aims to identify the determinants of IR quality. The authors have identified main drivers of IR quality, considering previous studies on voluntary disclosure and in particular on corporate social responsibility (CSR) and sustainability disclosure while with reference to the quality assessment of IR, the authors have used the Integrated Reporting Scoreboard, recently proposed in the literature.

After developing the research hypothesis, an empirical analysis has been carried out on a sample of IRs issued by 55 companies in a three-year period.

The main research results highlight, on the one hand, that the main determinants of IR quality are the country where the company operates, in particular European ones and mandatory IR countries; on the other hand, industry and firm’s size don’t seem to have a positive impact on IR quality.