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This study aims to examine whether and how gender diversity on corporate boards is associated with voluntary nonfinancial disclosures, particularly water disclosures.

This study uses corporate water information disclosure data from Chinese listed firms between 2010 and 2018 to conduct regression analyses to examine the association between female directors and water information disclosure.

Empirical results show that female directors have a significantly positive association with corporate water information disclosure. Additionally, internal industry water sensitivity of firms moderates this significant relationship.

This study determined that female directors can promote not only water disclosure but also positive corporate water performance, reflecting the consistency of words and deeds of female directors in voluntary nonfinancial disclosures.

Despite the well-recognized importance of recycled water, the study of industry-peer pressure on recycled water is relatively new. This study investigates how organizations experience and react to industry-peer pressure to set recycled water targets. Additionally, this study investigates the role of board chairs involved in sustainability committees in contributing to responses to industry-peer pressure.

Using Eviews 12, this study employed a pooled logistic regression model to analyze data from 1,346 firms on Taiwan and Taipei exchanges (2017–2020).

The findings revealed that frequency-based imitation drives recycled water target-setting diffusion. However, there is no direct relationship between outcome-based imitation and recycled water target-setting. Notably, outcome-based imitation drives the adoption of recycled water target-setting of firms with board-chair membership in sustainability committees.

This study faces certain data limitations. First, this study primarily focuses on water recycling. Future research could explore other ways to reduce water usage, such as using water-efficient equipment. Second, this study gathered information solely on the presence or absence of a board chairperson on the sustainability committee. Future researchers could explore the impact of the composition of sustainability committee on recycled water target-setting. Lastly, the sample used in this study is restricted to Taiwan's corporations that existed during 2017–2020. Future researchers may consider adopting a longitudinal design in other economies to address this limitation.

The findings of this study offer several guidelines and implications for recycled water target-setting and the composition of sustainability committees. It responds to an urgent call for solutions to water shortages when pressure from governments and nongovernmental organizations is relatively absent. The number of industry peers that have already set recycled water targets is indispensable for motivating firms to set their own recycled water targets. In terms of insufficient water-related regulatory pressure and normative pressure, this study found evidence suggesting that the direct motivation for setting recycled water targets stems from mimetic pressures via frequency-based imitation. The evidence in this study suggests that policymakers should require companies to disclose their peers’ recycled water target information, as doing so serves as an alternative means to achieving SDG 6.3.

Recycled water target-setting might be challenging. Water recycling practices may face strong resistance and require substantial additional resources (Zhang and Tang, 2019; Gao et al., 2019; Gu et al., 2023). Therefore, this study suggests that firms should ensure the mindfulness of board members in promoting the welfare of the natural environment when making recycled water target-setting decisions. To reap the second-mover advantage, firms must consider the conditions in which board members can more effectively play their role. Corporations may help their chairpersons in setting recycled water targets by recruiting them as members of sustainability committees. Meanwhile, chairpersons tend to activate accurate mental models when the water conservation performance of pioneering industry peers is strong enough to indicate the potential benefits of adopting recycled water target-setting. Investors’ and stakeholders’ understanding of how the composition of sustainability committees is related to recycled water target-setting may help to identify the potential drivers of firms’ water responsibility. Investors and stakeholders should distinguish firms in terms of the board chair’s membership of their sustainability committee and focus on water-use reduction outcomes in the industry. This study provides insights into circumstances whereby chairpersons help to restore the water ecosystem.

This study explains how frequency-based and outcome-based imitation are two prominent mechanisms underlying the industry-peer pressure concerning recycled water target-setting. Moreover, this study fills literature gaps related to the moderating roles of board-chair membership in sustainability committees concerning industry-peer pressure on recycled water target-setting.

This paper aims to examine the role numbers play in corporate environmental reporting. To deeply examine the ontological meanings of enumeration in the context of nature, the histories of number and accounting are explored. Some key tropes emerge from these histories, namely, distancing and control.

To explore some of the implications of quantifying nature, three years of environmental reports of ten companies from the ASX200 are analysed through a Barthsian lens. Examples of enumerating nature are highlighted and explored in terms of what this means for the corporate relationship with nature. This study has focussed on some specific aspects of nature that are commonly counted in corporate environmental reporting: carbon, energy, water, biodiversity and waste. This study explores how monetisation and obfuscation are used and how this informs the myth that nature is controllable.

This study finds that quantifying nature constructs a metaphorical distance between the company and the natural world which erodes the sense of connection associated with an authentic care for nature. These findings are critical in light of the detrimental impact of corporate activity on the natural world. The reports themselves, while promoted as a tool to help mitigate damage to the natural environment, are implicitly perpetuating its harm.

Given the extent to which companies are responsible for environmental damage and the potential capacity embedded in corporate communications, better understanding the implications of quantifying nature could powerfully instigate a new but necessary approach to nature.

The insights of this paper are relevant to those aiming to improve the underpinning approaches used in corporate environmental reporting. This paper provides new understandings of the ways quantitative expression of environmental values constructs the myth that nature is controllable.

This study aims to examine whether there exists any relationship between corporate biodiversity reporting decision (CBRD) and corporate environmental performance (CEP).

The primary sample contains 442 firm-year observations over a period of 13 years (2008–2020) for 34 listed Finnish companies. Based on both legitimacy theory and voluntary disclosure theory, 2 logit regression models are estimated to test the CBRD–CEP nexus. CBRD is a dichotomous variable. Three proxies for CEP, namely propensity to emit greenhouse gas (GHG), propensity to consume water and propensity to generate waste are employed.

This study finds that firms having higher propensity to consume water and generate waste are inclined to release biodiversity-related information. The findings support legitimacy theory suggesting that firms with inferior environmental performance may decide on reporting biodiversity information for legitimation purpose.

The study uses Finnish data and hence, the results may lack in generalizability to other national contexts.

The results of this study should be valuable to policy makers for formulating mandatory biodiversity reporting standards to ensure disclosure of standard, extensive and authentic biodiversity-related information by companies. The results should also be valuable to corporate managers and eco-friendly investors.

Corporate biodiversity reporting (CBR) is an under-researched area of environmental accounting literature. Using the Finnish context, this paper extends the existing literature by investigating whether any association exists between CBRD and CEP, which has not been examined before.

The purpose of this study is to explore the sustainability reporting of a public sector organisation (PSO). This study focuses on socio-environmental practices of a major agro-economic platform in Australia – the Murray–Darling Basin Authority (MDBA) to provide a unique perspective on water resource management and sustainability.

This longitudinal qualitative case study collects published data from the MDBA’s annual reports over 21 years (1998–2018) and considers economic, social and environmental dimensions of sustainability using legitimacy and institutional theory.

This study finds that the MDBA’s sustainability reporting is influenced by its response to the Water Act 2007 and the Basin Plan 2012 regulations and to maintain its legitimacy with stakeholders. The MDBA wished to pursue sustainability through integrating these regulations complemented by stakeholder expectations. Although all categories increased in reporting, the environment category has the highest primacy in achieving a healthy basin through sustainable water management for the long-term benefit of the stakeholders.

This study contributes to the PSOs sustainability reporting literature. Particularly, this study provides insights of sustainability reporting patterns and practices over a long period through a longitudinal study. This study contributes new knowledge on the awareness of PSOs sustainability practice which has implications for governments, regulators, policymakers, managers and other stakeholders.

The Australian PSOs setting is under-researched from the perspective of a regulatory framework. The MDBA case provides unique insights on water resource management and sustainability which has value for many countries around the world.

Information infrastructures can enable or constrain how companies pursue their visions of sustainability reporting and help address the urgent need to understand how corporate activity affects sustainability outcomes and how socio-ecological challenges affect corporate activity. The paper examines the relationship between sustainability reporting information infrastructures and sustainability reporting practice.

The paper mobilises a socio-technical perspective and the conception of infrastructure, the socio-technical arrangement of technical artifacts and social routines, to engage with a qualitative dataset comprised of interview and documentary evidence on the development and construction of sustainability reporting information.

The results detail how sustainability reporting information infrastructures are used by companies and depict the difficulties faced in generating reliable sustainability data. The findings illustrate the challenges and measures undertaken by entities to embed automation and integration, and to enhance sustainability data quality. The findings provide insight into how infrastructures constrain and support sustainability reporting practices.

The paper explains how infrastructures shape sustainability reporting practices, and how infrastructures are shaped by regulatory demands and costs. Companies have developed “uneven” infrastructures supporting legislative requirements, whilst infrastructures supporting non-legislative sustainability reporting remain underdeveloped. Consequently, infrastructures supporting specific legislation have developed along unitary pathways and are often poorly integrated with infrastructures supporting other sustainability reporting areas. Infrastructures developed around legislative requirements are not necessarily constrained by financial reporting norms and do not preclude specific sustainability reporting visions. On the contrary, due to regulation, infrastructure supporting disclosures that offer an “inside out” perspective on sustainability reporting is often comparatively well developed.

The Agenda 2030 have drawn a lot of interest in academic studies. This necessitates accounting research on nonfinancial reporting and sustainable development goals (SDG) disclosure in an under-investigated context. The purpose of this study is to examine the contribution of nonfinancial reporting practices to SDG disclosure by 120 companies from 12 African nations for the years 2016 to 2020.

The study uses a content analysis to gauge how much information are disclosed on SDG by the selected firms. The authors carried out content analysis using the global reporting initiative frameworks to determine the level of SDG disclosure across the companies by examining the selected nonfinancial reports.

Sustainability reports account for 50% of such SDG disclosure making it the highest. This is followed by corporate social responsibility report which accounts for 23%, while environmental reports account for 20% and Chairman’s statement accounts for 7%. The result is expected since corporate sustainability report has been the major channel for disclosing activities relating to social and governance issues in recent times.

The results of this study demand that corporate entities in Africa take responsibility for their actions and exert significant effort to achieve the SDG. While the government has the main responsibility, corporate entities must support the SDG to be realized.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is one of the few studies that examines nonfinancial reporting practices with a focus on SDG disclosure. In addition, this study offers novel insight into how accounting research contributes to nonfinancial reporting practices and SDG disclosure.

This study is an analysis that aims to understand the rationale behind the concept of value creation contained in the integrated reporting (IR) framework. As such, the authors examined the quality of the disclosures made in integrated reports by measuring the level to which the six capitals (6Cs) have been integrated into disclosures on value creation.

The IR framework’s value creation model focuses on six content elements and three guiding principles. Hence, the present analysis combines content analysis with quantitative measures in the form of a bespoke Integrated Disclosure Index. The index measures the level of integration found in the disclosures instead of the mere presence or absence of mentioned capitals, content elements and guiding principles in isolation. The present sample comprised the 2016 integrated/sustainability reports for 184 listed companies sourced from the Integrated Reporting Examples Database.

The 6Cs are well disclosed in form but only partially disclosed in substance. Further, overall levels of integration between the capitals, the content elements and the guiding principles are higher than average. Disclosures on materiality, business models and stakeholder relationships are somewhat lacking, as are the related medium- and long-term disclosures on outlook.

The paper contributes to the academic debate on IR by building a case for holistically assessing the substance of integrated reports. Considering that the IR value creation model can underpin and align with the 17 UN sustainable development goals, the authors show how the fundamental concept of the 6Cs sustaining value creation is understood and implemented differently across the various elements and principles of the IR framework.

This research also provides guidance for overcoming some of the practical hurdles associated with assessing the quality of reports because the authors provide tools for spotlighting the substance of disclosures over their form.

This paper delves into the substance of integrated reports by assessing how well the 6Cs have been integrated into disclosures on the content elements and guiding principles of the IR framework. In contrast to previous IR research that has mainly analysed capital, elements and principles in isolation, the authors develop an index assessing the integration of these three fundamental concepts of IR.

This study examines how accounting tools and techniques are used to create and support membership and reporting boundaries for a multi-entity sustainability scheme. It also considers whether boundary setting for this initiative helps to connect corporate activity with planetary boundaries and the SDGs.

A case study of a national agrifood sustainability scheme, analysing extensive documentary data and multi-entity sustainability reports. The concept of partial organising is used to frame the analysis.

Accounting, in the form of planning, verification, target setting, annual review and reporting, can be used to create a membership and a reporting boundary. Accounting tools and techniques support the scheme's standard-setting and monitoring elements. The study demonstrates that the scheme offers innovation in how sustainability reporting is managed. However, it does not currently provide a cumulative assessment of the effect of the sector's activity on ecological carrying capacity or connect this activity to global sustainability indicators.

Future research can build on this study's insights to further develop our understanding of multi-entity sustainability reporting and accounting's role in organising for sustainability. The authors identify several research avenues including: boundary setting in ecologically significant sectors, integrating global sustainability indicators at sectoral and organisational levels, sustainability controls in multi-entity settings and the potential of multi-entity reporting to provide substantive disclosure.

This paper provides insight into accounting's role in boundary setting for a multi-entity sustainability initiative. It adds to our understanding of the potential of a multi-entity reporting boundary to support connected measurement between corporate activity and global sustainability indicators. It builds on work on partial organising and provides insight into how accounting can support this form of organising for sustainability.

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) reporting has been widely accepted as a vital tool for communicating with stakeholders on a range of social, environmental, and governance issues, but how companies define, interpret, apply, integrate, and communicate their CSR efforts and impacts in corporate reporting is anything but a straightforward task. The purpose of this chapter is to explore the concept of materiality in CSR reporting and demonstrate practical examples of good CSR and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) reporting practices. We chose the aviation industry because of its economic relevance, constant growth, and future expected changes in the aftermath of COVID-19. In addition, airlines affect many of the SDGs directly and indirectly with contending results. This chapter is timely because of the growing willingness by companies to integrate CSR and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) thinking into the corporate strategy and business operations using materiality assessment and enhancing their competitive advantage and ability to maintain long-term value and because ESG and ethical investing have become part of the mainstream investing. Thus, this chapter contributes to an understanding of the wide range of existing and new reporting frameworks and regulations and reinforces the importance of discussing how this diversity of approaches can affect the work toward worldwide comparability of CSR and sustainability reporting.