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While in the past companies have voluntarily disclosed information beyond the financial bottom line, there is now a trend toward mandatory reporting in many countries. With the adoption of Directive 2014/95/EU, the European Union has taken a decisive step in this direction. However, research on the effects of these obligations is still at an early stage, particularly regarding Directive 2014/95/EU. Therefore, this paper aims to pursue the question of whether the directive has led to an improvement in reporting.

The authors analyzed the reporting of the EURO STOXX 50 companies before and after the directive entered into force. To evaluate the improvement, the authors assigned the individual Global Reporting Initiative indicators to the different information requirements of the directive.

Overall, the authors’ study revealed an improvement in reporting. However, this does not apply to all information categories. A significant improvement can be seen regarding the information on policies and due diligence, principal risk and non-financial key performance indicators. Institutional theory suggests that the observed improvements among these reporting-experienced companies can be understood as the result of coercive pressure triggered by the directive’s requirements.

The authors’ study contributes to the debate on the impact of non-financial reporting obligations by providing empirical insights into the effects of Directive 2014/95/EU. These insights can inform political and managerial decision-making, particularly in view of increasing reporting obligations.

The study aims to examine how the information disclosed by the managers in the management discussion and analysis (MD&A) reports varies at the different levels of corporate performance.

To understand this quantile effect, first OLS technique was adopted and then, the quantile regression method was applied to explore the impact of MD&A disclosures on the firm performance across the lower and upper quantiles. The sample size for the study is 490 firms’ year observations for the period 2016–2022.

The results of the study demonstrate the negative but significant relationship between MD&A disclosures and corporate performance, supporting the two management strategies of “competitive disadvantage” in case of good performance and “management impression strategy” in case of poor performance. Furthermore, with other corporate governance variables, both the size of the board and the number of independent directors on the board are positively significant only in the case of the upper quantile indicating the heterogeneity in the relationship between the performance and the MD&A disclosures. Therefore, the overall findings of the study support that these results contradict the agency theory and the stakeholders’ theory as managers are not acting well as agents on behalf of the investors and work well only when they are controlled by the large board having more independent directors.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no study so far has incorporated quantile regression to assess the effect of MD&A disclosures on company performance at various levels of the firm performance, which gives more robust insights about the viewpoint of the managers on the different level of the firm performance. In other words, this study highlights the important information as to how the information provided in the MD&A reports varies as per the good or poor performance of the companies.

This study aims to attempt to evaluate and establish the relationship between gender diversity (GD) on the board and corporate sustainability performance.

A sample of 212 non-financial companies listed on the National Stock Exchange has been considered for a period of 2013–2014 to 2018–2019. For the purpose of the analysis, this study has conducted the static panel data model analysis and also some diagnostics tests to arrive at robust results.

This study, from its analysis, interprets that GD or the proportion of women directors in the company plays a significant role in the decisions related to the sustainability performance of the company. Alongside GD, the profitability of the company, measured in terms of Tobin’s Q, and firm size are also seen to have a positive impact on the sustainability performance of the company.

This study from its findings contributes to the existing works of literature by highlighting the impact of GD on the sustainability performance of the firm. This study thus recommends the recruitment of an ample number of females in the top-notch positions of the board to create a gender-diverse management team to reap the benefits of leadership styles of both genders.

Very few studies have been conducted on the dynamics of women’s directorship, especially in an emerging economy like India. This study thus tries to fill this important gap in the literature by examining the relationship between board GD and sustainability performance of Indian firms.