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The study aims to improve the understanding of the online sustainability disclosure phenomena considering the quantity and nature of the content of the information related to sustainability disclosed in the corporate website of companies, providing evidence about the website sustainability disclosure of different size companies and characterizing the website sustainability disclosure of the Portuguese mold companies.

A content analysis methodology was used to the corporate websites of 83 companies in the sample. A direct approach was followed where the researcher is asked to read and classify the text in a previously defined category, but where the possibility of identifying new categories from the collected data is not excluded.

The information on sustainability disclosed by the mold companies is limited, whether in quantity or concerning the type of information. The information disclosed about environmental and social aspects is scarcer, being the focus more on aspects related to the economic dimension of sustainability, particularly in the areas related to products and services and customers.

The research design can be broadened to include other sustainability dissemination tools and other research methodologies, such as case studies, to provide a deeper understanding of the concerns and initiatives/practices of sustainability of mold companies.

This study contributes to the knowledge of sustainability dissemination practices in SMEs, an area of research that needs to be more explored and, in an industrial sector (molds) that have not received much attention in this area.

Based on the premise of the importance of corporate sustainability communication, the study focuses on the Internet as an information dissemination tool. It provides indications on the theme and information type that can be used to report the company's sustainability.

This study aims to evaluate the significance of the corporate website favorability notion and examines its factors in developing competitive advantage in the context of retail and service settings in the UK and Russia.

Based on the attribution, social identity and signaling theories, this study adopted the qualitative exploratory approach by conducting 14 interviews with retail experts and eight focus groups with retail users in the UK and Russia, combined with experts in website design, communication and marketing.

The study findings indicated that it is crucial to build and maintain a favorable corporate website that reveals the corporate identity as part of the overall company strategy. The study suggests that navigation, visual, information, usability, customization, security, availability, website credibility, customer service, perceived corporate social responsibility and perceived corporate culture are the factors of corporate website favorability that contribute to the company’s competitive advantage. The findings show that consumers from Russia as well as from the UK found the significance of a favorable corporate website (i.e. corporate website favorability), as well as the factors affecting corporate website favorability. However, consumers in the UK are more critical and demanding in the level of expectation of the website overall and put more weight than consumers from Russia on the perceived corporate social responsibility, perceived corporate culture, customer service and website credibility.

Corporate website favorability should be adopted by the companies, as part of the overall corporate identity management. Furthermore, it is advised to take into consideration the variations in the level of importance of the factors of corporate website favorability in different countries. The findings of this study suggest that this investigation will make a considerable managerial contribution to the understanding of a company’s decision-makers, communication professionals and website specialists about the building of a favorable corporate website in line with corporate identity strategy of the company.

There has been little systematic study of the effect of corporate websites on consumer evaluations of the websites; also, there is a lack of research with regard to the factors that contribute to the development of a favorable corporate website (i.e. corporate website favorability). This is the first study of its kind to find the effect of corporate website favorability in Russia, representing a non-western country, and the UK, representing a western country. Therefore, it contributes to the corporate visual identity literature by presenting the corporate website favorability construct and demonstrating the factors that influence corporate website favorability.

The use of social networking websites by companies to disclose corporate news and by investors to collect information for investment purposes is increasing rapidly. However, the role of investors’ affective reactions to corporate disclosures on social networking websites is under-researched. This paper aims to examine how the disclosure platform (disclosing news on a company’s Facebook Web page or the corporate investor relations Web page) and news valence (positive or negative) jointly influence investors’ affective reactions to corporate news and stock price change judgments.

The authors conduct an experimental study using 364 participants from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk website as a proxy for reasonably informed investors.

Results show that the disclosure platform influences investors’ affective reactions and stock price change judgments when the corporate news is negative, but not when the corporate news is positive. In addition, investors’ affective reactions mediate the influence of the disclosure platform on investors’ stock price change judgments when the corporate news is negative rather than positive.

This paper extends the theory on affective reactions to a social networking context by showing that differences in disclosure platforms and news valence influence investors’ affective reactions to corporate news. In addition, the study’s theory and findings have significant implications for researchers, company managers and public relations specialists, capital market participants, regulators and investor education organizations and users of social networking websites.

The purpose of this study is to examine credibility attributes in a website disclosure venue.

A total of 100 MBA and Masters of accountancy students participated in an experiment to assess whether specific disclosure characteristics impact the credibility of optimistic, forward‐looking voluntary disclosures. The disclosure characteristics examined include management's ability to meet the current earnings forecast and the disclosure of positive corporate governance qualities. A between‐subjects 2×2 analysis of variance (ANOVA) is used to test the hypotheses.

The findings indicate that disclosure of positive corporate governance qualities improves the credibility of optimistic, forward‐looking voluntary disclosures. In addition, the credibility of optimistic, forward‐looking voluntary disclosures is greater when management has met its current earnings forecast.

Suggestions for future research include determining whether the importance of credibility attributes differ across presentation venues. For example, credibility attributes that are important in a website venue may be less important when used in conjunction with voluntary MD&A disclosures. In addition, the impact of the disclosure of corporate governance qualities on the credibility of voluntary disclosures may differ across subject groups.

The increasing use of the investor relations pages of corporate websites and the push for enhanced disclosures underscores the importance of understanding voluntary disclosures in a website venue and the related attributes that improve the credibility of these disclosures.

The purpose of this paper is to establish a categorization of corporate websites as tools of online communication, in accordance with how they apply usability to the content they present, and to determine the indicators of the content and usability variables which mark the differences between each group of websites.

The present study analyses how 754 firms manage the usability of the content they provide through the channels of their corporate websites. To this end, a cluster analysis was applied to distinguish the types of firms according to the usability and content of their websites, followed by a discriminant analysis to determine which variables differentiate the groups.

The work has presented a list of the indicators that the literature has considered to be determinant aspects of firms’ use of their websites for corporate strategic communications. These indicators can be applied in forming an instrument to measure the quality of company websites in this area.

The present paper has attempted to clarify the panorama of corporate online communication via websites, understanding the issue as being not just a mere technicality but addressing it from the perspective of the emitter of the communication as a strategic instrument.

The aim is to study how the chemical industry in Tarragona (Spain) uses the internet to communicate with its community on issues relating to chemical risk and the impact of the chemical industry on the environment, health and safety.

A specific methodology was defined allowing the corporate websites of the chemical industry to be studied. A content analysis methodology was used, searching the information that exists on the corporate websites of the most significant trade associations and chemical companies in the Tarragona conglomerate.

The results suggest that there are some common characteristics of the chemical industry strategy in providing information on their corporate websites about the chemical risk and the impact of the chemical industry: a tendency to globalise the information about these issues, the maximisation of the positive concepts such as safety and commitment, and the minimisation of the negative concept of risk.

The study was carried out on a small number of companies, thus the results cannot be considered statistically representative of the entire chemical industry in Spain. In addition, the Tarragona population was not asked for their views on these corporate websites.

The results show the treatment of information concerning chemical risk in the most important trade associations and companies in the sector, the state of information concerning chemical risk on the corporate websites of such organisations, and the risk communication strategy of these companies through the internet. It also presents the design of a specific methodology suitable for analysing the information available on chemical risk on the corporate websites of companies, institutions and organisations of any kind.

Existing literature reveals a general lack of research on business-to-business (B2B) ecommerce showcasing how managers’ affect plays a role in enhancing their attitude toward the businesses they work with. The purpose of this study is to fill that void by ascertaining whether managers’ corporate website knowledge, corporate website expertise and affect toward a corporate site influence their attitude toward the corporate website. It also investigates whether managers’ attitude guides corporate website usage intention in the context of two culturally diverse countries.

Data were collected from managers from the USA and Kuwait using an online survey method. Structural equation modeling using EQS 6.2 software was used for analysis.

The results indicate that corporate Web knowledge influences Web expertise and affect in the US sample; in the Kuwaiti sample, Web knowledge influences Web expertise but does not influence affect. The findings in both studies reveal that managers’ knowledge about the Web has a positive effect on their attitude toward a business website. For Kuwaiti managers, Web expertise has a positive influence on affect. However, Web expertise does not influence managers’ affect in the US sample. The results further suggest that affect influences a manager’s attitude toward corporate websites in the US and Kuwaiti samples.

Self-efficacy and affect infusion theories serve as the foundation for this study. This research adds to these two theories in three ways. First, it examines the combined influence of affect and attitude on B2B managers’ intent to use a corporate website. Second, it proposes a single model that examines the combined relationships among managers’ knowledge and managers’ Web expertise that elicit managerial affect toward corporate websites. Third, the proposed model was tested using samples from two diverse countries (developed, the USA, and developing, Kuwait).

Increased public scrutiny and stakeholder pressure have given more importance to strategic corporate social responsibility (SCSR) and its three dimensions – orientation, process and value creation. At the same time, they provide banks the inspiration needed to pursue business goals, attain positive performances and communicate their social responsibility efforts. This paper analyses whether and how companies in the banking sector use corporate websites to communicate SCSR dimensions.

A content analysis was performed based on the corporate websites of leading banks included in the Dow Jones Sustainability World Index and the Hang Seng Corporate Sustainability Index to assess the prominence of SCSR communication.

The study shows that banks give less prominence to SCSR on corporate websites differently from companies belonging to other sectors, as they are less likely to expose their orientation to SCSR and pay slightly less attention to value creation than other companies.

The paper provides theoretical insights into SCSR dimensions and how they are communicated on corporate websites. From a practical standpoint, the study provides guidance for managers in the banking sector aimed at improving their communication efforts, avoiding decoupling issues and adopting a consistent value creation perspective.

Few studies have used a value creation perspective to differentiate between the dimensions of a SCSR approach. The paper fills this gap by assessing the communication efforts adopted by banks and insurance companies in this area.

This paper aims to explore how the Italian wine industry discloses corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices and quality certifications and the corresponding determinants via websites. The study also aims to investigate the relationship between CSR practices and financial performance. The information consistency between the quality certificates reported on corporate websites and official database statements is also explored. Lastly, the paper investigates how the relationship between the size of wineries and CSR disclosure changes according to firms' geographic location.

This paper analyses CSR corporate communication via the websites of a sample of Italian wineries by adjusting the theoretical framework developed by Amran (2012) to the wine sector's peculiarities. Moreover, a cross-certification analysis and a moderation analysis were performed to fulfil the purpose of the research.

The analysis revealed the extensive use of CSR disclosure via websites. It was found that company size positively affects CSR disclosure and Quality Certification Disclosure (QCD), while geographic location slightly moderates the relationship between the two variables. In addition, a negative relationship between CSR disclosure and corporate financial performance and its reverse causality emerged. Moreover, for most wineries, information consistency between the quality certificates reported on corporate websites and official database statements was observed.

The study's main limitation is that the search process was performed during lockdown. Therefore, the examined issues could change in the near future due to the shift in priorities that the COVID-19 pandemic is determining.

The results can help managers implement CSR disclosure and QCD practices to enhance stakeholder legitimacy and enable their companies to compete in strongly competitive international markets.

The paper represents the first study investigating online QCD and its consistency in the Italian wine sector.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze to what extent changes in corporate websites reflect firms’ survival. Since keeping a website online involves some costs, it is likely that firms would invest resources on it only when they are active and healthy. Therefore, when a firm dies, this event is likely to be manifested on its website as lacking updates or being down.

Changes in the corporate websites of a panel of Spanish firms were tracked between 2008 and 2014 in order to evaluate the approach. The status of websites, classified according to the type of change undergone, was used to infer firms’ activity status (active or inactive). Multi-period logistic regressions and a duration model were applied to study the relationship among the website status and the firm’s status.

Results showed that changes in website contents clearly reflect the firm’s status. Active firms were mainly associated with updated corporate websites, while inactive firms were more associated with down websites. In fact, results confirmed that the firms’ death hazard increases when the website activity lowers.

Although online information is increasingly being used to monitor the economy, this is the first study to connect online data to firms’ survival. The results revealed a new source of information about business demography and evidenced corporate websites as a fresh source of high granularity business data.