Search results

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.

Utilising the resource dependency theory, this study investigates the impact of board interlocks (CEOs' interlocks, women board interlocks, independent board interlocks and total board interlocks) on carbon emissions performance in India.

This research applies varieties of regression methods comprising robust least squares, generalised method of moments and Heckman's regression on a final sample of 63 of India's top 200 Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) listed companies that voluntarily participate in the Carbon Disclosure Project's (CDP) Climate Change Program and disclose their climate change data for years 2013–2020.

We provide strong evidence for a strong negative association between CEOs' interlocks and women board interlocks on carbon emissions performance. Independent and total board interlocks are not found to significantly affect carbon emissions performance.

Our sample is restricted to the proportion of the top 200 BSE firms that voluntarily submit their carbon emissions data to CDP. Also, the study's focus is India, limiting the generalisation of our findings to other emerging economies.

The study's findings provide valuable insight for regulators and corporate board of directors on the important role of CEOs and women board who interlock with other firms in steering the carbon emissions reduction. Specifically, the corporate board of directors should encourage CEOs to build more networks through outside board memberships. The regulators should revisit the Companies Act, 2013 and the Securities Exchange Board of India (SEBI) regulation to increase the number of multiple directorships of CEOs and women board of directors.

This study responds to the dearth of literature on the efficacy of board interlocks on carbon emissions performance in emerging economies.

In this chapter, we conduct a metadata analysis of articles published in accounting, business and finance journals ranked by Australian Business Dean Council (ABDC), and benchmarked against the Chartered Association of Business Schools (ABS) ranking, that discuss firm- and country-level greenhouse gas (GHG) emission practices and reporting. Number of publications on GHG research, research methods, number of citations and ratio, across countries and continents are some of the topics we cover. We employ a list of articles on accounting, business and finance journals ranked A* and A in the ABDC journal rankings from 2015 to 2022. The study uses a structured literature review to analyse 74 papers on GHG reporting practices at the firm- and country level. Although this line of enquiry is still nascent and developing, the study found underrepresentation of Africa and the Middle East in GHG literature generally. In addition, majority of the articles examined also concentrate on quantitative methods. Most of the articles on GHG research are A-ranked in the ABDC ranking scheme. It was also found that few studies focus on the countries and companies with the highest emissions. While there has been some progress in interrogating GHG across the globe, there is still much room for further research. A key area of future research is exploring the GHG reporting practices in the African and the Middle Eastern sub-regions. There is also a need to examine countries and companies with high emissions. A further study needs to explore the benefits of other research methods in addition to quantitative methods, as different research methods could yield different insights that would enhance research-based conclusions.

The purpose of this chapter is to investigate the relationship between corporate governance and greenhouse gas (GHG) disclosures using evidence from the United States.

The study is based on a sample of 168 firms listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in the United States. Panel data are used covering a period from 2017 to 2020 involving 672 observations.

The results indicate that board size has a positive and significant effect on GHG disclosures while the effect of ownership concentration and insider ownership is negative and significant. The proportion of non-executive directors is not significant. In terms of control variables, firm size and financial slack have a positive effect on GHG disclosures.

The study results add evidence to the already existing literature on the relationship between corporate governance and GHG disclosures using evidence from the United States.

This study investigates the impact of the Paris Agreement (and other factors) on carbon information disclosures to the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP).

A sample of South African listed companies was selected and data analysed from 2013 to 2017. A random effect panel data model using SPSS was used to determine whether the Paris Agreement had an effect on carbon information disclosure.

The results indicate that (1) the Paris Agreement, as an example of an intergovernmental coordination initiative, is significant in creating awareness and increasing the carbon disclosures to the CDP. Furthermore, (2) in terms of the other factors examined, providing incentives for managing climate change and assessing climate risks further into the future improves disclosure quality, while no relationship was found between the CDP score and the approval by key management personnel.

This research examines CDP disclosures for an emerging market before and after the signing of the Paris Agreement.

This research shows the importance of supportive government policy. Furthermore, a commitment to climate change disclosure is manageable and achievable and needs to be implemented at the management level.

This chapter outlines the need for global actions on mitigating greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and introduces the six chapters contained in this issue. The impact of GHG emissions on the environment undoubtedly exacerbates the consequence of climate change and is not constrained within the borders of the emitting countries and companies. Emitting countries (and companies) export much of the harm created by GHG emissions given that the earth's atmosphere intermixes globally. GHG top emitters are not necessarily the victims of its consequences, since the extent to which each country is affected by adverse weather such as floods depends on the distribution of climate vulnerability rather than jurisdictional emission. Hence, global collective actions are required to find plausible solutions to reduce GHG emissions. This issue consists of one literature review and five empirical chapters. The insight from the literature review highlights the dearth of studies addressing GHG emissions reporting and management in Africa and the Middle East. The first three empirical chapters examine the efficacy of corporate governance in facilitating GHG disclosures and performance in China, the United States and India. The fifth chapter examines the effect of the Paris Agreement on climate change disclosures in South Africa. There is mixed evidence as to how corporate governance affects GHG disclosure, but it is clear that the Paris Agreement had a positive impact on climate change disclosures in South Africa. The sixth chapter examines the social determinants of GHG in top 100 emitting countries and documents evidence that energy use determines the extent of GHG emissions in both developed and developing countries. However, the results show that other social determinants such as urbanisation, literacy and corruption contribute in varying ways to GHG emissions in developing countries. Taken together, the collection of chapters in this issue provides incremental understanding to the effect of GHG emissions and necessary actions that can help in mitigating them.

This chapter explains how the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), an important achievement of the Rio Earth Summit held in 1992, instigated interest in, and enthusiasm for, the fight against climate change in the international arena, promoting national actions, creating common frameworks and motivating corporations to take action against climate change. The Convention recognised climate change as a problem in 1994 when the UNFCCC took effect, which was remarkable considering that there was much less scientific evidence available at that time. Through extensive literature review, this chapter presents the origin and content of the Convention and explains how it creates new international instruments for mitigating climate change, its impact on corporate climate change-related accountability practices and where it stands now after 20 years in operation. The researcher argues that there is a need for strong cooperation among national and international actors such as governments, companies, national and international non-governmental organisations and international governmental organisations in order to create climate change-related accountability.

This chapter discusses and investigates the sustainability reporting across different sectors. The first section discusses and investigates the relationship between sustainability reporting and primary sector's performance (Agriculture and Food Industries Sector and Energy Sector). The second section discusses and investigates the relationship between sustainability reporting and secondary sector's performance (Manufacturing Sector). The final section discusses and investigates the relationship between sustainability reporting and tertiary sector's performance (Banks and Financial Services Sector, Retail Sector, Telecommunication and Information Technology Sector, and Tourism Sector).

Purpose: The purpose of this chapter is to establish the sustainability reporting practices of FTSE 100 companies using integrated reporting (IR), corporate social responsibility (CSR) and corporate governance (CG) as proxies. Our study has adopted a holistic approach by combining dimensions of each factor in one variable.

Design/Methodological Approach: The study data cover all FTSE 100 companies over five years, thereby generating 505 company-year observations for each variable of the study. Authors have collected the data from Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) reports filed with Thomson Reuters and International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC).

Findings: Results indicate the practice of sustainability reporting in FTSE 100 companies both per variables and dimensions levels. It shows, for example, 89% of the companies reported on their charitable donations. The study also found that 79% of the FTSE 100 companies reported on their sustainability committees whilst 86% and 85% reported on their emission reduction and waste reduction policies, respectively. Results show that the CSR impact is higher than CG regarding IR adoption. The Logistic Model manages to explain a high percentage of IR adoption while controlling for other misspecification issues such as multicollinearity.

Practical Implication: The study highlights practice of substantiality reporting for public shareholding companies listed on FTSE 100 Index along with interaction among proxies. These will be of interest to companies not only in the FTSE 100 Index but also those outside. Companies can rely on these factors to strengthen their governance, social responsibility and reporting policies in consideration of all stakeholders and not just a few. We believe that we shed a quantitative explanation on IR adoption by CSR and CG factors, and we expect an impact on practices following results of our study.

Social Implication: Results have indicated that at least 60% of companies in the FTSE 100 Index have imbedded social responsibility activities, such as charitable giving, waste reduction initiatives, emissions reduction policy and sustainability committees.