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The purpose of this study is to investigate how board characteristics impact the governance, environmental and ethics disclosure. Board characteristics such as board size, gender diversity, board independence, CEO/chair duality and board meeting are included.

This study is based on a sample of 82 companies listed in the SBF120 between 2012 and 2017. A number of econometric techniques are used such as generalized least squares to test the panel regressions.

Board independence, board gender diversity and board meetings have a positive and significant influence on governance, environmental and ethics disclosure. Board size is positively and significantly associated only with corporate environmental disclosure. The adoption of Global Reporting Initiatives (GRI, G4) has not affected or biased the corporate governance (CG), environmental and ethics disclosure.

This study adds to the literature on management reporting behavior and ethics and contributes to the extant CG literature by offering new evidence on the disclosure of good CG practices as well as environmental and ethics behavior. This study offers new insights about the potential influence of board characteristics on such specific disclosure practices focusing “during the optional period of GRI4 and after their mandatory adoption”.

This paper attempts to present the state equation for linear systems in a fuzzy form. A “categorical” approach is given, illustrating in a simple way how to generalize classical results.

The purpose of this paper is to approach, both theoretically and empirically, public sector reporting at European Union (EU) level. It contributes to the accounting harmonisation literature by revealing the actual status of governmental reporting at the national level.

The paper carried out an exploratory data analysis of the harmonisation of statistical, budgetary and financial reporting at the EU level. A mapping visualisation offers a comprehensive overview of the current state of connections between these reporting systems.

The results reveal the complexity of governments’ reporting systems homogeneity, although all stakeholders recognise the struggle for the principles of performance and transparency in the public sector. Thus, these are following the EU Commission’s study, which concludes that there is significant heterogeneity in the accounting and reporting practices applied transversely throughout all Member States.

The relevance of the study is comprehensive, from the economic environment to the practitioners, from the international regulatory bodies to the national ones, all can assess and quantify the significance of the past, present and future changes, considering their needs. The limitations of the research regard the documentation background because uniformly accessing some information presented by the EU Member States is relatively tricky. Future research might focus on the effects of these changes as they occur.

The study contributes to the scientific literature in the public sector through a comprehensive, well-supported and statistically grounded analysis performed at EU level, able to provide reliable results and to support valuable future recommendations towards harmonised reporting. Moreover, it supports and encourages all national and international efforts for improving the comparability of financial, budgetary and aggregated statistical reports.

This paper aims to investigate whether the key items encompassed in the new reporting trends are addressed in the current reporting set and, also, whether there are certain patterns regarding disclosure practices across a sample of reporting entities.

The research methodology takes into consideration both the financial and non-financial elements from the entities’ activities and embeds them in the analysis, in a more holistic frame offered by integrated reporting. The disclosure level is investigated using the six-tier capital model from the International Integrated Reporting Council Framework and the eight major principles from GRI guidelines. Furthermore, the cluster analysis is used to identify the disclosure practices patterns within some European Union local public administrations.

The level of disclosure within the analyzed entities is relatively high. Also, the results of the cluster analysis reveal some disclosure patterns, especially regarding the Anglo-Saxon and Northern local public administrations, the municipalities with the highest degree of disclosure of the sample.

The most significant limitations are represented by the sample of municipalities, the language filter and the fact that only one-year data were considered for analysis.

The study can be useful to any other institutions under the dome of the public sector, willing to enhance public accountability throughout greater transparency. Also, it might help the public managers to outline a long-term development plan about how to create value and to whom, material issues, risks and strategy through the integrated reporting, a cornerstone for future changes. Moreover, it might also be a subject of interest in the research environment, offering new opportunities for further empirical studies, by applying and testing it in other public organizations.

The study provides an original assessment tool useful to improving the reporting process. Also, it can be useful to other public institutions that are willing to enhance public accountability throughout greater transparency.

The purpose of this study is to explore the underlying assumption that macroeconomic factors (legal, cultural, social, financial and/or economic) might support or constrain countries’ decisions to timely and fully transpose the Directive 2014/95/EU (EUD) on non-financial information disclosure.

The research design relies mainly on exploratory factors analysis, regression techniques (linear, logistic and multinomial) and additional robustness and sensitivity tests, all performed to ensure the reliability and trustworthiness of the results.

The results reveal that the directive’s transposition process is driven more by regulatory and social legitimisation forces than by economic and financial pressures. Stronger governance and weaker interests’ protection ensure appropriate compliance with new regulations, while highly educated countries express openness towards developing accounting systems that enhance information transparency.

The results are useful for practitioners currently engaged in the directive’s implementation process, academics interested in challenging debates concerning this topic and regulatory bodies to better support its full enactment.

This paper approaches the newsworthy topic of non-financial information disclosure settled by the EUD and marks an essential step towards harmonising non-financial reporting across Europe. It enriches the scientific literature through the first empirical analysis that sheds light on its explanatory drivers.

In recent years, international bodies and public opinion have recommended that governments adopt social responsibility practices to inform and be accountable to citizens about their sustainability actions in environmental, social and economic fields (Galera et al., 2014) and restore citizens' confidence in public authorities (Crane et al., 2008; Shepherd et al., 2010). This chapter reviews the literature on measuring and reporting sustainable performance in the public sector. Analyzing 35 studies published in a period of 10 years (from 2012 to 2021), we address two specific research questions: How and to what extent have public organizations changed to integrate sustainability reporting (SR) systems? What are the enabling organizational factors in adopting SR in public organizations?

This study aims to explore the linkages between sustainable development and sustainability reporting by approaching the UN’s 2030 Agenda in connection with the Integrated Reporting (IR) and Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) frameworks. It aims to outline a theoretical model able to support the achievement of sustainable development goals (SDGs) through appropriate reporting.

The research methodology follows a qualitative approach, combining content and benchmarking analyses of the official documents in question. It aims to provide a better understanding of the conceptual matches between the “5 Ps” of sustainable development and the two sustainability reporting frameworks (IR and GRI) by breaking them down into components and overlapping their constituents to highlight the connections.

The results reveal that both sustainability reporting frameworks provide prerequisites to ensure SDGs achievement due to the embedded sustainability issues. As there are more matches between SDGs and the capitals implied in the pursuit of value creation, IR better fits to become part of the sustainable development strategy as a valuable option for reporting on SDGs.

The study addresses academia through a better understanding of the connections between SDGs and sustainability reporting. It might help regulators to improve their latest efforts to enhance transparency and comparability through the enactment of Directive 2014/95, as long as it has not imposed a standardised report yet. It could guide practitioners to face future challenges and support their steps towards standardised reporting practices.

This paper approaches the newsworthy topic of sustainable development, outlining a conceptual model meant to support the SDGs achievement through appropriate standardised reporting. It might also fill the gap of the Directive 2014/95 on non-financial information disclosure as it identifies the most suitable type of reporting to enhance the harmonisation at the European level.

Introduction: Nonfinancial reporting is the way in which a company provides information to stakeholders on the social, environmental, and economic impact and performance of its past and present activities. Aim: The objective of the chapter is to analyze the stage and the way of implementation of the requirements of the Non-Financial Reporting Directive by the Romanian companies. Method: In order to carry out the study, we analyzed, structured, and synthesized the public information in order to identify companies that have the obligation to report, thus 721 companies were identified with more than 500 employees on December 31, 2019. Results: The main identified characteristics of the companies consisted in the fact that most of them carried out the activity in the manufacturing industry, had their headquarters in the Bucharest-Ilfov region, most of the companies operating according to Company Law were not listed on the stock exchange. Regarding the financial indicators, 81% of companies registred profit and 52% had a turnover of more than 50 million euros. Regarding the manner of application of the Directive requirements, from the analyzed sample of 22 companies listed on the stock exchange, it was found that 41% of the companies chose to present the nonfinancial information in a separate report. Conclusion: The level of compliance with reporting requirements is still uncertain, as for most companies the information are not public, only listed companies are concerned with improving reporting. İmplications and Originality of the Chapter: The study may be a benchmark in further analysis of the transparency of nonfinancial information conducted by companies and may help in future analysis of their evolution over time.

This chapter analyses how corporate governance codes in Europe approach CSR, devoting specific guidelines or recommendations or specifying the responsibility of implementing and disclosing CSR in the company.

Content analysis have been used in a sample of 27 corporate governance codes of 27 European countries, issued in the European Union (EU) and United Kingdom (UK), issued by governments (seven codes), national stock exchange (eight codes), industrial associations (six codes) and composites (six codes).

Only five out of 27 codes make and explicit reference to the term Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). Two of them reflect the importance of a CSR Report (Slovenia and Spain), whereas the Spanish Code was the only code which devoted a section to the implementation of a CSR policy.

Although corporate governance codes could represent an opportunity to shift the focus from an implicit CSR approach to an explicit CSR approach in Europe, the truth is that content related to the issue and its level of specificity does not reflect that change yet.

Previous literature has not focused on the analysis of corporate governance codes from a CSR perspective, so the chapter is relevant for policy makers when it comes to updating corporate governance codes.

This paper aims to establish the extent to which South African state-owned entities (SOEs), where integrated reporting is a quasi-mandatory reporting requirement, have incorporated the principles of the international integrated reporting framework. These identified South African SOE reporting practices are compared with the ‘integrated reporting’ related disclosures of SOEs in selected countries, where integrated reporting remains voluntary.

This paper deploys a qualitative research approach, to thematically analyse the content of publicly available annual or integrated reports of South Africa SOEs, as the primary country of analysis, with those of their counterparts in five purposively selected countries. The relative scores for the SOEs of each country is calculated using a disclosure index derived from the international integrated reporting framework principles.

The paper found that despite being a quasi-mandatory reporting requirement, not all South African SOEs complied with all the international integrated reporting framework principles. Accepting the assertion that integrated reporting enhances organisational transparency and accountability, the accountability disclosure practices of South African SOEs appear more comprehensive than their counterparts in other countries.

Extant research into integrated reporting has primarily focussed on the profit-seeking private sector, with limited research into its applicability in the public sector. This paper attempts to address this paucity by examining aspects of integrated reporting by South African SOEs, which are then compared to accountability reporting practices in other countries.