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The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of social movements engendered by the Arab Spring crisis on the relationship between corporate social responsibility disclosure (CSRD) and corporate governance attributes, particularly board composition, considering the importance of governance after the Arab Spring event.

Content analysis was used to examine the extent and nature of CSRD in annual reports of Jordanian companies listed on the Amman Stock Exchange covering the period 2009–2016. A dynamic regression model using panel data is then undertaken for a sample of 114 listed companies over the period to analyse the potential impact of board composition on the level of CSRD.

The results reveal that there was a significant increase in the level of CSRD post-the Arab Spring crisis; and that governance appears to be a key driver. Specifically, board age, directors educated in business and/or accounting-related fields and foreign members are found to have a significant positive relationship with CSRD.

Looking at the Arab region pre- and after the Arab Spring helps to complete the global picture of how company governance can lead to improved CSR performance. Specifically, this region has been behind in developing rules and codes that include CSR. The results show that having a diverse board, with directors with expertise specific to the context, increases the effectiveness of stakeholder management through CSRD. The results, therefore, offer valuable insights for companies, policymakers and for the development of regulations.

This paper aims to examine the relationship between corporate governance, in particular board diversity, and corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting among the top 150 listed companies in Australia over a three-year period.

The quantitative analysis involving a longitudinal study is used where content analysis is undertaken to analyse the extent of CSR disclosures in annual reports. Regression analysis using panel data is used to analyse the potential association between CSR disclosure and five important board diversity measures, specifically independence, tenure, gender, multiple directorships and overall diversity measure.

The results based on the regression analysis reveal that three of the board diversity attributes (gender, tenure and multiple directorships) and the overall diversity measure have the potential to influence CSR reporting. The relationship between independent/non-executive directors and CSR disclosure however is unclear. In addition, three of the control variables (firm size, industry and CEO duality) are found to have some influence on CSR disclosure, whereas board size and profitability are found to be insignificant. The results also indicate the existence of some possible interaction effects between gender and multiple directorships.

The paper has implications for companies, for policymakers and for the professional development needs of board members. Australian companies should consider identifying board attributes that enhance CSR disclosures, as it has been shown in previous studies that CSR disclosure in Australia is low when compared to other developed countries. Moreover, given that there is such limited research linking board diversity and CSR disclosure, the results of this paper provide scope for further research. Moreover the paper contributes to the existing literature on board composition and CSR disclosure by extending the literature to board diversity and provides preliminary evidence of the influence of board diversity on CSR disclosure in Australia.

This paper aims to examine the role of local/provincial government in influencing corporate social and environmental reporting (CSER) in China, and more specifically, how the underlying economic and political factors associated with local government have influenced the quality of CSER.

The authors used 234 environmentally sensitive companies listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges during 2013 and 2015 as the research sample to test the relationship between CSER and local government’s political connection and economic prioritisation and the potential mediating effect of local economic prioritisation.

The analysis provides evidence that local/provincial government’s political geographical connectedness with the central government has directly and positively influenced the level of CSER, while local prioritisation of economic development has a direct but negative effect on CSER in China. In addition, local/provincial prioritisation of economic development has mediated the relationship between local–central political geographical connectedness and CSER.

While local/provincial governments are heavily influenced by the coercive pressure from the central government, they also act in their own political and economic interests in overseeing CSER at the local level. This study raises the question about the effectiveness of the top-down approach to improving CSER in China and suggests that the central government may need to focus more on coordinating and harmonising different local/provincial governments’ interests to enable achieving a common sustainability goal.

The authors provide evidence revealing how the economic and political contexts of local government have played a significant role in shaping CSER in China. More specifically, this paper addresses a gap in the literature by highlighting the importance of local government oversight power for CSER development and how such oversight is determined by local prioritisation of economic development and political geographical connectedness of local and central governments.

Within the board diversity literature, the issue of gender diversity has been extensively studied, however, limited research has examined whether gender diversity at board level has any influence on corporate social responsibility (CSR) decisions. This paper aims to fill this knowledge gap and shed light on whether, and how, gender diversity influences CSR related decisions.

In total, 13 in-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with board members of Australian companies to examine their perceptions of the effect of gender diversity.

Although the findings show evidence that there is a general perception that gender diversity has the potential to influence board level decisions, this does not appear to translate to CSR decisions specifically. The results from the interviews identified that several issues and moderating factors interact with the gender-CSR relationship.

The paper contributes significantly to the body of knowledge by going beyond the plethora of quantitative analyses. The results suggest that there is much work to be done to improve governance policy and mechanisms if boards are to see the potential for gender to have a positive impact on CSR decision-making.

The study responds to calls for more research adopting qualitative studies, including interviews and case studies, to understand the complex interactions that take place during board decision-making. The findings provide useful insights for future research, practise and policymakers.

In a state capitalist country such as China, an important influence on company reporting is the government, which can influence company decision-making. The nature and impact of how the Chinese government uses its symbolic power to promote corporate environmental reporting (CER) have been under-studied, and therefore, this paper aims to address this gap in the literature by investigating the various strategies the Chinese government uses to influence CER and how political ideology plays a key role.

This study uses discourse analysis to examine the annual reports and corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports from seven Chinese companies between 2007 and 2011. And the data analysis presented is informed by Bourdieu's conceptualisation of symbolic power.

The Chinese government, through exercising the symbolic power, manages to build consensus, so that the Chinese government's political ideology becomes the habitus which is deeply embedded in the companies' perception of practices. In China, the government dominates the field and owns the economic capital. In order to accumulate symbolic capital, companies must adhere to political ideology, which helps them maintain and improve their social position and ultimately reward them with more economic capital. The findings show that the CER provided by Chinese companies is a symbolic product of this process.

The paper provides contributions around the themes of symbolic power wielded by the government that influence not only state-owned enterprises (SOEs) but also firms in the private sector. This paper also provides an important contribution to understanding, in the context of a strong ideologically based political system (such as China), how political ideology influences companies' decision-making in the field of CER.

The purpose of this paper is to review most recent developments of social and environmental accounting (SEA) in the context of developing countries and to offer insights for the latest research in this field. It also provides an introduction to the AAAJ special issue.

The authors have undertaken a conceptual overview of the field developed in the past two decades (2001–2020) with a view to identify major themes, trends and future research directions.

The overview reveals that only 43 SEA papers addressing contextual challenges of developing countries have been published in leading accounting journals in the last 20 years. The coverage of these publications is concentrated in a small number of countries and regions. Interdisciplinary accounting journals, especially AAAJ, are the main publishing outlets in this field. The topic areas are dominated by social accounting challenges, with much less focus on environmental accounting, although developing countries are particularly exposed to the threats of climate change, water pollution and biodiversity loss. The literature reviewed uses elaborating, problematising and theorising contexts as three main contextualisation approaches to analyse contextual themes framed around regulatory, political, cultural and religious, and social-economic systems. Although various conceptual lenses have been adopted in the developing country SEA literature, the use of institutional theory and its various extensions to address political and cultural complexities seems to become more prominent, as shown in most of the contributions included in this special issue.

This review is limited to leading accounting journals. SEA research increasingly published in other disciplines such as in management, social and environmental areas might provide a more comprehensive view in this research field.

In this paper, inter alia, the authors review and synthesise the previous literature in a conceptual framework, illustrating and highlighting the importance of contextual framing of SEA in developing countries. Based on this review, the authors propose some ideas for a future research agenda aiming to advance the field. The authors expect this paper and the special issue to act as a reference point for emerging SEA researchers from developing countries to raise more scholarly impactful enquiries in this area.

This paper investigates how Indonesian regional government-owned enterprises disclose what they plan, account for and report their sustainable development goal (SDG) contributions, showcasing their commitment in attaining impactful SDG achievement. In doing so, it aims to highlight how adopting a sustainability accounting and reporting (SAR) framework can enhance SDG disclosures.

Content analysis, guided by an adapted SAR framework, is employed to examine the SDG disclosures across planning, accounting and reporting in 2019–2020 annual/sustainability reports of the 24 enterprises.

Most Indonesian regional government-owned enterprises or badan usaha milik daerah (BUMDs) studied adhered primarily to Financial Services Authority Regulation (Otoritas Jasa Keuangan (OJK)) 51/2017, which does not sufficiently enforce SDG disclosures in the planning stage. They disclosed SDG-related activities in the accounting and reporting stages, highlighting programme implementation and budget realisation with little emphasis on strategic planning. This resulted in inadequate evidence in the disclosures of the strategic actions to comprehensively plan, account for and report their SDG achievement, essential information for stakeholders to showcase their meaningful actions to contribute to national and global SDG progress.

Prior SDG disclosure studies highly focus on analysing the linkages of organisations’ reported sustainability programmes contributing to national SDG achievements, neglecting the investigation of how organisation should employ SAR to disclose what they plan, account for and report their impactful SDG contribution to stakeholders. This paper addresses this underexplored context, particularly in local government-owned enterprises which have a crucial role in accelerating SDG achievement. Given the global nature of SDGs, this analysis provides valuable lessons for organisations and regulators in Indonesia and other developing countries to utilise SAR to enhance SDG reporting. So that, they can better plan, account for and report tangible actions toward meaningful SDG achievement.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how legitimacy is gained, maintained or repaired through direct action with salient stakeholders and/or through external reporting, by using a number of empirical case vignettes within a single case study organisation.

The study investigates a foreign affiliate of a large multinational organisation involved in an environmentally sensitive industry. Data collection included semi-structured interviews with 26 participants, organisational reports and participation in the organisation’s annual environmental management seminar and a stakeholder engagement meeting.

Four vignettes featuring environmental issues illustrate the complexity of organisational responses. Issue visibility, stakeholder salience and stakeholder interconnectedness influence a company’s action to manage legitimacy. In the short-term, environmental issues which affected salient stakeholders resulted in swift and direct action to protect pragmatic legitimacy, but external reporting did not feature in legitimacy management efforts. Highly visible issues to the public, regulators and the media, however, resulted in direct action together with external reporting to manage wider stakeholder perceptions. External reporting was used superficially, along with a broad suite of communication strategies, to gain legitimacy in the long-term decision about the company’s future in New Zealand.

This paper outlines how episodic encounters to manage strategic legitimacy with salient stakeholders in the short-term are theoretically distinct, but nonetheless linked to continual efforts to maintain institutional legitimacy. Case vignettes highlight how pragmatic legitimacy via dispositional legitimacy can be managed with direct action in the short-term to influence a limited range of salient stakeholders. The way external reporting features in legitimacy management is limited, although this has predominantly been the focus of prior research. Only where an environmental incident damages legitimacy to a larger number of stakeholders is external reporting also used to buttress community support.

The concept of legitimacy is comprehensively applied, linking the strategic and institutional arms of legitimacy and illustrating how episodic actions are taken to manage legitimacy in the short-term with continual efforts to manage legitimacy in the long-term. Stakeholder salience and networks are brought in as novel theoretical extensions to provide a deeper understanding of the interrelationships between these key concepts with a unique case study.

Recent research has drawn attention to the tension between the Central and local governments in China regarding their roles in environmental protection. This paper aims to explore this tension and examine the extent to which local/provincial government’s environmental oversight has influenced the quality of corporate environmental disclosure in China.

A sample of 198 listed companies in heavily polluting industries were selected to examine the relationship between their environmental disclosure quality and the respective local government’s environmental oversight level.

The results provide evidence that local/provincial government’s environmental oversight significantly influences environmental disclosure in China. Despite the coercive pressure from the powerful Central government on corporate environmental disclosure, local/provincial governments are able to buffer the pressure and adjust the intensity of their environmental oversight on companies during the implementation of central policies to retain local economic and political interests. This may partially explain the persistent issue of low environmental disclosure quality in China.

This study enriches our understanding of the significant role of local governments in China in enhancing or sometimes discounting the regulatory enforcement of the Central government on corporate environmental disclosure, pointing to the need for concerted efforts by both local and Central governments to advance environmental disclosure development.

Research on environmental disclosure in developed countries has been well established in the literature. However, such research in developing nations is still limited, especially in China, the world largest developing country. The existing literature on environmental disclosure in China links it with either market demands, or regulatory enforcement from the Central government. The importance of local/provincial governments and their environmental oversight has long been ignored, which motivates this research.

Developing countries experience their own social, political and environmental issues, but surprisingly limited papers have examined sustainability reporting in these regions, notably in sub-Saharan Africa. To fill this gap and understand the state of sustainability reporting in sub-Saharan Africa, this paper aims to investigate the current state of reporting, identifies the major motivations and barriers for reporting and suggests an agenda of future issues that need to be considered by firms, policymakers and academics.

This paper includes analysis of reporting practices in 48 sub-Saharan African countries using the lens of New Institutional Economics. It comprises three phases of data collection and analysis: presentation of overall reporting data collected and provided by Global Reporting Initiative (GRI). analysis of stand-alone sustainability reports using qualitative data analysis and interviews with key report producers.

The analysis identifies key issues that companies in selected sub-Saharan African countries are grappling within their contexts. There are significant barriers to reporting but institutional mechanisms, such as voluntary reporting frameworks, provide an important bridge between embedding informal norms and changes to regulatory requirements. These are important for the development of better governance and accountability mechanisms.

Findings have important implications for policymakers and institutions such as GRI in terms of regulation, outreach and localised training. More broadly, global bodies such as GRI and IIRC in a developing country context may require more local knowledge and support. Limitations include limited data availability, particularly for interviews, which means that these results are preliminary and provide a basis for further work.

The findings of this paper contribute to the knowledge of sustainability reporting in this region, and provide some policy implications for firms, governments and regulators.

This paper is one of only a handful looking at the emerging phenomenon of sustainability reporting in sub-Saharan African countries.