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To determine whether to entrust the European Union (EU) to create a new nonfinancial reporting framework or endorse the extant reporting framework developed by the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), this study aims to explore whether the mandatory implementation of the EU Directive positively impacted the GRI-based environmental disclosure.

The authors compared the pre- and post-EU Directive environmental disclosure of 16 Italian environmentally sensitive companies. The authors used an extended coding scheme and developed a unique scoring system to compare the quantitative and qualitative changes in environmental disclosure.

The analysis showed that the quantity of environmental disclosure increased after the mandatory EU Directive adoption. The most significant change was observed regarding the disclosure topics explicitly required by the Italian legislature. Additionally, disclosure of soft information continued to prevail over that of hard information in the post-Directive period. While the Directive boosted the level of adherence to GRI standards, Italian companies disclosed information that could be easily mimicked (soft) instead of objective measures that could be verified (hard). In light of this evidence, the endorsement of extant GRI standards could be a valuable option for enhancing the comparability and transparency of environmental disclosure.

This study used an original extended coding system and proposed related environmental disclosure indexes that allow monitoring changes in environmental disclosure over time. To the authors’ best knowledge, this study is one of the few that justifies the significant impact of regulation (here the EU Directive) on the increase in environmental disclosure and that uses hard and soft information typology to examine the quality of environmental disclosure.

This paper aims to examine the compliance of disclosure with the financial accounting standards of the Accounting and Auditing Organisation for Islamic Financial Institutions’ (AAOIFI) related to Islamic financing products by Islamic banks in Bahrain and Qatar.

The study measures compliance using disclosure indexes. The disclosure indexes include the three financial accounting standards of Murabaha, Mudaraba and Musharaka. The data are collected from the annual reports of 24 Islamic banks in Bahrain and Qatar over a period of 2012-2015.

The paper found that Islamic banks in Bahrain and Qatar comply with AAOIFI financial accounting standards related to Murabaha, Mudaraba and Musharaka. However, there was a level of non-compliance in both countries. In addition, it found that the extent of compliance had increased over the 2012-2015 period. Also, the Murabaha standard had the highest mean of compliance. Moreover, the results showed that the Islamic banks in Qatar tend to have more compliance of overall Murabaha and Mudaraba disclosures compared to the Islamic banks in Bahrain.

The findings are preliminary and highlight that the issue is of high interest to Islamic banks and AAOIFI. Hence, it requires a detailed follow-up to form a complete picture that would assist AAOIFI and regulators gear their policies toward better quality disclosure by Islamic financial institutions. Even though the findings are encouraging, future research is recommended to enforce compliance with the AAOIFI financial accounting standards.

This is a pioneer empirical study that focuses on the level and trend of compliance with AAOIFI financial accounting standards related to the Islamic financing products of Murabaha, Mudaraba and Musharaka standards, especially in Qatar. Additionally, it is the first study comparing between the only two Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, i.e. Bahrain and Qatar, that mandatory apply the AAOIFI standards.

The purpose of this paper to analyze the risk reporting practices and its determinants of commercial banks during the period of the adoption of the Basel II Accord in Portugal.

The paper conducts a content analysis of the risk and risk management sections included in the management reports and the notes of the annual reports of Portuguese commercial banks, for the years 2007, 2010 and 2013.

Findings show that theoretical frameworks underpinned in agency and legitimacy theories continue to provide valid explanations for risk reporting by Portuguese banks. More specifically, findings indicate that agency costs, public visibility and reputation are crucial drivers of risk reporting. Findings also indicate that younger banks with lower risk management skills use risk reporting either as an informational process or as a channel to manage organizational legitimacy.

The content analysis does not allow readily for in-depth qualitative inquiry. The coding instrument is subject to coder bias. Information about risk can be provided in sources other than annual reports. Additionally, not all banks disclose information on corporate governance-related variables that could also influence risk reporting.

The current research setting has never been studied hitherto. In this sense, this study seems to be of great relevance given the scarcity of literature on the subject in Portugal.

Stakeholders' uncertainty about firms' value drives their urge to get information, as well as managerial disclosure choices. In this study, the authors examine whether and how an important source of uncertainty – the recent COVID-19 pandemic's effect on corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure – is beyond managerial and stakeholders' control.

The authors develop a novel construct for daily CSR disclosure by employing computer-aided text analysis (CATA) on the press releases issued by 125 New Zealand Stock Exchange (NZX) listed from 28 February 2020 to 31 December 2020. To capture COVID-19 intensity, the authors use the growth rate of the population-adjusted cumulative sum of confirmed cases in New Zealand on a specific day. To examine the association between the COVID-19 outbreak and companies' CSR disclosure, the authors employed ordinary least squares (OLS) regression by clustering standard error at the firm level.

The authors find a one standard deviation increase in the COVID-19 outbreak leads to a 28% increase in such disclosures. These results remained robust to a series of sensitivity tests and continue to hold after accounting for potential endogeneity concerns. In the channel analysis, the study demonstrates that the positive relationship between COVID-19 and CSR disclosure is more pronounced in the presence of a well-structured board (i.e. a large, more independent board and with a higher proportion of women on it). In further analysis, the authors find the documented relationship varies over the pandemic's life cycle and is moderated by government stringency response, peer CSR pressure and media coverage.

This paper is the first study that contributes to the scant literature examining the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak on CSR disclosure. Prior research either investigates the relationship of the CSR-stock return during the COVID-19 market crisis or examines the relationship between corporate characteristics including the quality of financial information and the reactions of stock returns during COVID-19. The authors extend such studies by providing empirical evidence that managers respond to COVID-19 by increasing CSR disclosure.

This study aims at investigating the impact of the disclosure and the Shariah governance on the financial performance in MENASA (Middle East, North Africa and Southeast Asia) Islamic banks.

We use the Generalized Least Squares (GLS) regression models to check the interdependence relationship between the disclosure, the Shariah governance and the financial performance of 47 Islamic banks (IBs) from ten countries operating in MENASA region. The sample period is from 2012 to 2019. In these regressions models, Return on Assets (ROA) and Return on Equity (ROE) are the dependent variables. The disclosure and the Shariah governance indicators are the independent factors. To measure the Shariah governance, we use the three sub-indices, which are the Board of Directors (BOD), the Audit Committee (AC) and the Shariah Supervisory Board (SSB). Size, Leverage and Age of the bank are used as control variables. We also used The Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) and the three-stage least squares (3SLS) estimations for robustness check.

Result shows a negative relationship between the disclosure and the two performance measures in IBs. Furthermore, as far as the governance indicators are concerned, we found that the BOD and AC, as well as the BOD and SSB, have a positive and significant impact on the ROA and ROE, respectively. This reveals that good governance had a significant association with higher performance in MENASA IBs.

The paper considers both IBs that adopt mandatory as well as voluntary AAOIFI standards and the GLS method to investigate the impact of the AAOIFI disclosure and the Shariah governance on ROA and ROE. Also, it uses the GMM and the 3SLS estimations for robustness check. It is relevant for researchers, policymakers and stakeholders concerned with IBs' performance.

This study explores the scope, materiality and extent of environmental and social sustainability disclosure – as benchmarked against the Global Reporting Initiatives (GRI-G4) – of the top 10 logistics firms operating in Australia. It also investigates the relationships between the extent of environmental and social sustainability disclosure of these firms and their actual financial performance.

The authors adopted an inductive case study approach for an in-depth investigation of the relationships among concepts. A content analysis of the firms' sustainability reports was performed to determine their pattern and extent of sustainability disclosure against the GRI framework. A disclosure–performance analysis (DPA) matrix was employed to relate the extent of environmental and social sustainability disclosure of these 10 firms with their actual financial performance (i.e. return on assets [ROA] and total revenue growth).

This study found that the extent of sustainability reporting was relatively high on the labour practices and decent work subgroup, followed by the environmental dimension of the GRI-G4 framework. However, it was relatively low on the society, human rights and product responsibility subgroups of the GRI framework. The DPA revealed that “Leaders” (firms with higher sustainability disclosure levels) achieved significantly higher ROA. However, “Opportunists” (firms with lower sustainability disclosure levels) achieved higher levels of financial returns (i.e. ROA and total revenue growth) with less attention to sustainability issues, which contradicts the win-win view of the sustainability disclosure–financial performance relationship.

First, this study contributes an in-depth review of sustainability disclosure practices of top logistics firms operating in Australia. Second, using DPA, it identifies the novel effects of environmental and social sustainability disclosure levels on these firms' financial performance. It also sheds further light on the potential effect of investments beyond substantial profitability for sustainability growth and corporate governance on the sustainability disclosure–financial performance relationship.

This paper aims to examine the impact of environmental, social and governance (ESG) disclosure and firm value (FV), as well as, pinpoints the role of the audit quality (AQ) as a moderating variable on such impact; where the authors hypothesize that AQ modulates the relationship between ESG disclosure and the FV.

Data of a sample of firms listed on the Egyptian Stock Exchange Market (EGX) were collected over the period of 2017–2021 and analyzed using the regression and 2SLS models.

The results suggested that: (1) the ESG has a significant positive impact on the FV in the EGX, and (2) AQ has a significant impact, as a moderating variable, on the relationship between ESG disclosure and FV.

The findings would help the Egyptian market authorities in realizing the importance of integrating ESG information within the financial reports of the listed firms. The findings could also help in developing effective disclosure procedures to provide shareholders with useful information.

This paper contributes to the literature regarding the ESG disclosure components and the FV value by considering AQ in testing such relationship.

This study investigated the visibility of carbon emissions allowances accounting in the financial reports of 32 clean development mechanism (CDM) projects in the UAE to uncover the obstacles to setting consistent standards for carbon emission accounting. As carbon emissions are monetized as credits, consistent accounting standards can aid decision-makers in the development of carbon emission mitigation strategies.

This study used a grounded theoretical framework for exploring the terms used in the policy documents of international accounting bodies regarding accounting standards and guidelines for carbon emission credits. Raw qualitative data were gathered, and an inductive approach was used by analyzing documents from various sources using the qualitative data text analysis software QDA Miner 6.

The findings showed that the financial statement reports of the corporations did not include disclosure of the carbon credit account. This omission was due to the lack of global standardization of carbon credit accounts and emission allowance recognition. This may hinder the production of a comprehensive report containing accurate and valuable financial information relevant to all stakeholders.

The study is among the first to use a grounded theoretical framework to investigate whether corporations are applying common standards and guidelines for carbon emissions accounting.

The paper identifies the types of risks disclosed by Italian organisations using integrated reporting (IR). This paper aims to understand the level and features of risk disclosure with the adoption of IR.

The authors use risk classifications already provided in the literature to develop a content analysis of Italian organisations’ integrated reports published.

The content analysis reveals that most of the Italian organisations incorporate many types of risk disclosure into their integrated reports. Organisations use this alternative form of reporting to communicate risk differently from how they disclose risks in traditional annual financial reporting. That is, the study finds that the organisations use their integrated reports to disclose a broader group of risks, related to the environment and society, and do so using narrative and visual representation.

The paper contributes to a narrow stream of research investigating risk disclosure provided through IR, contributing to the understanding of the role of IR in representing an organisational risk.

This paper aims to investigate the current state of knowledge in key reporting aspects in relation to sustainability reporting in general and to reflect on their relevance to Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) in particular. In doing so, the major gaps in that knowledge are identified, and the paper proceeds to suggest further research avenues.

The authors conduct a review of papers published in leading journals concerning sustainability reporting to analyse the progress in the literature regarding three important reporting topics: materiality, comparability and assurance.

The review conducted in this study shows that there is still work to be done to ensure high-quality and consistent sustainability reporting. Key takeaways from the review of the extant literature are as follows: there is ongoing debate about the nature of sustainability reporting materiality, and single versus double materiality. Clearer guidance and better contextualisation are seen as essential for comparability, and, as GRI suggests, there is an important link to materiality that needs to be considered. Finally, assurance has not been mandatory under the GRI, but the current development at EU level might lead to the GRI principles being incorporated in the primary assurance standards.

In this paper, the authors review and synthesise the previous literature on GRI reporting dealing with three key reporting aspects.

The authors extract some takeaways from the literature on materiality, comparability and assurance that will all be key challenges for GRI in the future.

This paper provides an updated review of the literature on GRI reporting dealing with three key reporting aspects.