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Non-financial reporting (NFR) is viewed as a major step towards organisational transparency and accountability. While the number of non-financial reports published every year has been growing exponentially over the last two decades, their quality and effectiveness in managing environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance have been questioned. Addressing these concerns, several jurisdictions, including EU Member States, introduced mandatory NFR regimes. However, the evidence on whether such regulation truly translates into enhanced ESG performance remains scarce. This paper aims to fill this gap in the literature by investigating the impact of the EU’s Directive 2014/95/EU (Non-financial Reporting Directive, NFRD) on the ESG scores of Polish companies.

Drawing upon institutional and strategic perspectives on legitimacy theory, the authors test the relationship between the introduction of the NFRD and the ESG scores derived from the Refinitiv database, using a sample of all those companies listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange whose disclosure allows for measuring ESG performance (yielding 171 firm-year observations from 43 companies).

This study’s findings show an improvement of ESG performance following the introduction of the NFRD. The difference-in-differences approach indicates that the improvement is larger for companies that are subject to the legislation when it comes to overall ESG performance, particularly for environmental and social performance. Nonetheless, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, no significant effect is found for performance in the governance dimension.

This study investigates the role of transnational mandatory reporting regulation in the first years of its enactment. The evidence offers insights into the effects of disclosure legislation in the context of an underdeveloped institutional environment.

Focusing on the Agri-Food and Beverage sector, the paper investigates the direct effect of worldwide mandatory non-financial disclosure on several financial dimensions as well as its moderating effects on the relationship between sustainability and financial performance.

The authors performed fixed-effect regressions on a sample of 180 global listed companies, considering a period of eight years. The authors also tested the moderating effects of non-financial disclosure regulation on the relationship between sustainability and financial performance.

The authors found a positive direct impact of mandatory non-financial disclosure on Operating Return on Asset, Return on Equity and Return on Sales. The analysis also highlighted the negative moderating effects of non-financial reporting regulation on the relationship between sustainability issues and financial performance. As for the Cost of Debt, the authors found mixed results.

This study considers a short-term perspective focusing on a limited sample composed of companies playing a key role in the global agri-food system.

The paper identifies which financial performance dimensions are positively or negatively affected by mandatory non-financial disclosure. Accordingly, managers can rearrange corporate activities to deal with further reporting normative requirements concurrently preserving financial performances and fostering corporate sustainability.

This study recommends fostering mandatory non-financial disclosure to increase corporate transparency fostering the sustainability transition of the Agri-Food and Beverage industry.

The paper highlights global mandatory non-financial disclosure effects on financial performance considering a sector that is cross-cutting impactful on plural sustainability issues.

This paper aims to critically analyse the transposition implications of Union Directive 2014/95. This Directive identified the need to raise the transparency of the social and environmental information provided by the undertakings to a similarly high level across all Member States.

The paper considers how the European Member States of the European Union (EU) have transposed Directive 2014/95 into their regulations. The focus is on the juridification of social accounting in the pursuit of creating an overlapping consensus through Habermas’s concept of internal colonisation. The paper uses qualitative content analysis to scrutinise the national laws that transpose Directive 2014/95, discussing both what has been accomplished and what can be achieved by the release of future legislative provisions.

Despite the aim of Directive 2014/95 to create a common language for disclosing non-financial information, this study shows an implementation gap among and between Member States and an inconsistent picture of the employment of this Directive. Its implementation in the 28 European countries was considered a process of colonisation in implementing Union directives among European undertakings. However, the implementation process, which exemplifies Habermas’s juridification, has failed due to the lack of balance between moral discourse and actions.

This paper contributes to the ongoing debates concerning the implementation of mandatory disclosure of environmental and social information in the EU Member States, promoting new directions for the EU’s democratic laws on social accounting. In addition, it offers an example of how internal colonisation only catalyses effects when moral laws are legitimised through the provision of procedures.

The research investigates valuers' understanding of the value of sustainability in property and its consideration in valuation practice. The paper explores the extant research that has examined valuers' perceptions of the relationships between sustainability and market values, sustainability measurement, value relationships and the standards and guidelines released industry bodies.

This paper, part 1 of 2, reports the current state of play of valuation research in the consideration of sustainability in valuation practice and the role of industry bodies in the guidance regarding sustainability consideration in valuation. The second paper provides the next rendition of a longitudinal study examining valuation practice in Australia.

The paper provides an overview of the evolution of the consideration of sustainability in property over the past two decades. Providing insights of how the property sector, its markets and valuation professionals have responded to answering the questions of: what is the value of sustainability? Whilst earlier publications both industry and academic publications alike focussed on the normative aspects of how sustainability should affect value, more recent research starts to ascertain the implications of sustainability on property values. Despite industry bodies providing information, education, guidelines and standards, it would seem that valuers in their practice are still grappling with the challenges of understanding the rapidly evolving area of sustainability, environmental, social and governance and climate risks in valuations.

The paper does not present as an authority on all research that has been conducted to date, it provides an overview of the evolving nature of both academic research and industry consideration of sustainability, particularly in a valuation context. This provides the background for Part 2.

The broader agenda of net zero, climate change, mitigation and carbon requirements, whether driven by market forces or government legislation, are generating substantial changes in property markets, as investors reconsider their positions and model the implications of carbon emissions on their bottom lines. Government policies appear to have a considerable influence over market behaviours, which filters through to stakeholder decision-making. However, despite government policies, clear market signalling and industry body guidance on valuing sustainability, the content and depth of sustainability consideration in valuation are still limited.

The paper provides an overview of the last decade of research into the value of sustainability and the evolving nature of information and guidance for valuers to identify, evaluate and consider sustainability in valuation.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a comprehensive overview of the geography of mortgage lending in Great Britain. It uses a new mortgage dataset as a way to shed light on the spatial distribution of mortgage finance and to highlight the different lending patterns of seven major UK banks. It also examines the relationship between the distribution of mortgage finance and socio-economic status at the local level.

The methodology is based on simple quantitative techniques, including spatial analysis, location quotient analysis and socio-economic classification. Lending data for Great Britain’s 10,000 postcode sectors are the basis for analysis here.

The results suggest that some banks lend significantly less than others in poorer areas, but, owing to a lack of data, it is not possible to say why. It is possible to identify banks that appear to change their lending patterns in areas with different socio-economic characteristics. The paper concludes by reflecting on key messages and by making a small number of recommendations to improve transparency in the sector.

In the absence of demand-side metrics, it is not possible to determine which banks lend disproportionately high or low amounts in poorer areas.

This paper has implications in relation to increasing financial transparency in the residential mortgage sector. The most important implication would be to highlight the fact that this new data – whilst a welcome development – is a long way from providing proper transparency in the mortgage lending sector.

This paper fills a gap in the international literature in relation to our understanding of the geography of mortgage lending in a major world economy. It also highlights important differential lending patterns in relation to socio-economic status at the sub-national level.

This study aims to analyze the relationship between companies’ business ethics (BE) and corporate social responsibility (CSR), with particular reference to policies toward employees, with the aim of understanding if and how the two concepts are linked and to foster a better management of the company-employee relationship through BE and CSR policies.

Through a content analysis, the authors study three issues related to employees disclosed in Code of Ethics (CE) and CSR report of a sample of Italian companies. Next, using a multivariate regression model, the authors examine the relation between the BE and CSR initiatives, related to employees.

The findings show that CE and CSR initiatives are negatively related. They are distinct concepts, but since the authors find that they are connected, they must also be considered in terms of their mutual dependence. To standardize practices toward employees in a code may induce the need to establish additional corporate social responsibility initiatives that elicit legitimate stakeholder satisfaction.

The analysis focuses on employees, whereas several other CSR aspects that can be explored. Furthermore, additional investigation (through questionnaires or interviews) could deepen this analysis. Furthermore, it might be interesting to consider different countries or more variables, such as cultural differences or different regulations.

The results of this research reveal that BE and CSR initiatives require precise and personalized observations to be properly understood; however, as they are linked, they must also be studied in their mutual interdependencies; this can be very useful to define governance bodies and organizational procedures devoted to BE and CSR issues.

This research provides a tool for evaluating and monitoring CSR and BE principles and can be adapted to many business contexts and refer to different stakeholders.

The existing literature on BE and CSR presents opportunities for further study, as these concepts are often studied without insights into their mutual impacts.