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The study examines the social and environmental responsibility indicators disclosed by three International Council on Mining and Metals (ICMM) corporate mining members in their social and environmental reporting (SER) from 2006 to 2014. To achieve this aim, the author limits the data two years before (i.e. from 2006 to 2007) and six years after (i.e. from 2009 to 2014) the implementation of the Sustainable Development Framework in the mining sector in 2008.

Using the techniques of content analysis and interpretive textual analysis, this study examines 27 social and environmental responsibility reports published between 2006 and 2014 by three ICMM corporate mining members. The study develops a disclosure index based on the earlier work of Hackston and Milne (1996), together with other disclosure items suggested in the extant literature and considered appropriate for this work. The disclosure index for this study comprised six disclosure categories (“employee”, “environment”, “community involvement”, “energy”, “governance” and “general”). In each of the six disclosure categories, only 10 disclosure items were chosen and that results in 60 disclosure items.

A total of 830 out of a maximum of 1,620 social and environmental responsibility indicators, representing 51% (168 employees, 151 environmental, 145 community involvement, 128 energy, 127 governance and 111 general) were identified and examined in company SER. The study showed that the sample companies relied on multiple strategies for managing pragmatic legitimacy and moral legitimacy via disclosures. Such practices raise questions regarding company-specific disclosure policies and their possible links to the quality/quantity of their disclosures. The findings suggest that managers of mining companies may opt for “cherry-picking” and/or capitalise on events for reporting purposes as well as refocus on company-specific issues of priority in their disclosures. While such practices may appear appropriate and/or timely to meet stakeholders’ needs and interests, they may work against the development of comprehensive reports due to the multiple strategies adopted to manage pragmatic and moral legitimacy.

A limitation of this research is that the author relied on self-reported corporate disclosures, as opposed to verifying the activities associated with the claims by the sample mining companies.

The findings from this research will help future social and environmental accounting researchers to operationalise Suchman’s typology of legitimacy in other contexts.

With growing large-scale mining activity, potential social and environmental footprints are obviously far from being socially acceptable. Powerful and legitimacy-conferring stakeholders are likely to disapprove such mining activity and reconsider their support, which may threaten the survival of the mining company and also create a legitimacy threat for the whole mining industry.

This study innovates by focusing on Suchman’s (1995) typology of legitimacy framework to interpret SER in an industry characterised by potential social and environmental footprints – the mining industry.

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 study aims to examine the impact of firm-level corporate social responsibility (CSR) governance characteristics on the extent, quality and comprehensiveness of CSR reporting of Pakistani listed enterprises.

This study used content analysis of corporate annual reports and stand-alone CSR reports available on corporate websites in 2021 to identify CSR-related governance features and to calculate CSR reporting scores. Multivariate regression is used to test relationships. In addition, the analysis tested the moderating role of profitability in these relationships.

Firm-level CSR governance characteristics contribute to the extent, quality and comprehensiveness of CSR reporting in a developing country. Further, results confirm that profitability moderates the relationship between CSR governance and the extent and comprehensiveness of CSR reporting.

This study employed cross-sectional data and focused on a single developing country. Future studies might include a cross-national sample and longitudinal data to demonstrate the broader relevance of these findings. The outcomes of this study are restricted to CSR disclosures based on CSR reports and annual reports. Future research may examine additional corporate communication channels, such as websites and social media platforms.

This research validates the important role of CSR governance mechanisms as a driver of comprehensive CSR reporting. Business leaders and policymakers can facilitate improved corporate reporting by requiring companies to implement CSR-related governance mechanisms.

This is the first study to test the influence of firm-level CSR governance mechanisms in promoting the quantity, quality and comprehensiveness of CSR reporting in a developing country.

The main objective of the study was to compare Business Responsibility and Sustainability Report (BRSR) norms with Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) standards, so as to establish whether BRSR norms match the global standards and best practices or not. Additionally, an effort was made to ascertain and highlight areas where BRSR norms are more comprehensive, just match, or require further refinement to be at par with the GRI standards. The study highlights the similarities and dissimilarities between the internationally accepted GRI standards and the BRSR framework; thereby suggesting areas of improvement for the BRSR framework.

Scrutinised all the 36 standards of the Global reporting initiative and BRSR format and guidelines of the Securities Exchange Board of India. The Content Analysis Technique was used to ascertain the percentages of similarities between the two frameworks.

The content analysis found that there are 52.30% similarities between BRSR norms and GRI standards. Further, this study shows the factors that led to the dissimilarities between BRSR and GRI standards. This study found 18 areas where BRSR is more informative than GRI, and 7 areas where BRSR could be further refined.

This study contributes to research in the sustainability reporting framework to be adopted by Indian listed companies. There are a few Indian listed companies who are already reporting as per the GRI framework and might perceive the BRSR as a separate reporting altogether. But as found in this study, more than half of the BRSR framework is similar to the GRI framework; thus, half the work is almost done. As such this study helps Indian firms in developing an understanding of the BRSR and puts in perspective its standing among global sustainability reporting standards. This study shall help institutional investors, rating agencies, and external assurers to better visualize an Indian entity, by referring to its Business Responsibility and Sustainability Reporting.

Companies allowing employees to self-report business expenses face the risk of expense fraud because some occasionally engage in dishonest behavior to receive reimbursements for their use. Drawing on the technology acceptance model, this study aims to investigate the effects of perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use and perceived security on the trust in e-reimbursement systems and the relationship with honest disclosure intention.

A self-administered questionnaire was distributed to 254 respondents, with the partial least squares structural equation modeling used to analyze the data.

The findings showed that perceived security and perceived usefulness explained trust in e-reimbursement systems, whereas perceived ease of use had no significant effect on it. Corporate governance and trust in e-reimbursement systems have a positive relationship with whistleblowing intention. At the same time, corporate governance mediates the relationship between trust in e-reimbursement systems and honest disclosure intention.

This study sheds light on using e-reimbursement systems within organizations to prevent fraudulent reimbursements and offers recommendations to management on enhancing employees’ intention to engage in honest disclosure behavior through e-reimbursement systems.

This study aims to explore how individual-level and organizational-level factors interact to influence pay information (PI) seeking and PI sharing preferences in PI conversations (i.e. the face-to-face communications context). The authors examine how an individual’s judgment of their pay relative to others – or pay equity perception – affects their PI seeking and PI sharing preferences and how those relationships are affected by organizationally created pay transparency policies and pay transparency practices.

Using a 2 × 2 × 2 experimental design on the MTurk platform, the authors used a scenario-based prompt method to manipulate employee perceptions of pay equity and organizational pay transparency and tested those effects on employee pay disclosure preferences. The authors consider both pay policy and pay practice dimensions of pay transparency and both PI seeking and PI sharing dimensions of pay disclosure preferences. The final sample had 597 participants.

The authors find employees’ pay equity perceptions are negatively related to PI seeking behaviors and are even more so when organizations have restrictive pay transparency policies. Also, both pay transparency policy and pay transparency practice increase PI sharing preferences.

The authors provide insight into how individual perceptions drive pay disclosure motivations and the role of organizational policy and practice in influencing pay disclosure preferences within PI conversations. The authors provide insight into the antecedents that shape pay disclosure preferences, which lead to a both PI conversations among coworkers and an increase in one’s pay understanding. This study shows the contextual nature of PI seeking and PI sharing preferences, which are a motivational antecedent to pay-related sensemaking behaviors.

Environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors have become increasingly important in investment decisions, leading to a surge in ESG investing and the rise of sustainable investment assets. Nevertheless, challenges in ESG disclosure, such as quantifying unstructured data, lack of guidelines and comparability, rampantly exist. ESG rating agencies play a crucial role in assessing corporate ESG performance, but concerns over their credibility and reliability persist. To address these issues, researchers are increasingly utilizing machine learning (ML) tools to enhance ESG reporting and evaluation. By leveraging ML, accounting practitioners and researchers gain deeper insights into the relationship between ESG practices and financial performance, offering a more data-driven understanding of ESG impacts on business communities.

The authors review the current research on ESG disclosure and ESG performance disagreement, followed by the review of current ESG research with ML tools in three areas: connecting ML with ESG disclosures, integrating ML with ESG rating disagreement and employing ML with ESG in other settings. By comparing different research's ML applications in ESG research, the authors conclude the positive and negative sides of those research studies.

The practice of ESG reporting and assurance is on the rise, but still in its technical infancy. ML methods offer advantages over traditional approaches in accounting, efficiently handling large, unstructured data and capturing complex patterns, contributing to their superiority. ML methods excel in prediction accuracy, making them ideal for tasks like fraud detection and financial forecasting. Their adaptability and feature interaction capabilities make them well-suited for addressing diverse and evolving accounting problems, surpassing traditional methods in accuracy and insight.

The authors broadly review the accounting research with the ML method in ESG-related issues. By emphasizing the advantages of ML compared to traditional methods, the authors offer suggestions for future research in ML applications in ESG-related fields.

The study aims to empirically investigate whether the disclosure of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) affects the level of integrated thinking and reporting (ITR) on a sample of European listed companies.

The sample focusses on companies listed to the STOXX Europe 600 Index. Data have been gathered from Refinitiv DataStream for the period 2019–2020 for the measures of ITR level and SDG disclosure. Then, a multivariate regression analysis is developed to test whether or not, and if so, to what extent, SDG disclosure affects the level of ITR.

SDG disclosure has been increased over time and companies have primarily focussed on SDG 8, SDG12 and SDG 13 demonstrating their awareness on sustainability issues close to the core business and on the climate urgency. Furthermore, SDG disclosure leads to a higher level of ITR meaning that SDG disclosure is an important pillar contributing to ITR.

The empirical analysis has not deeply investigated each component of ITR and SDG disclosure.

The research can be useful for companies aiming to improve their commitment towards the SDG implementation with an integrated approach. Moreover, the study sheds light on the importance of the SDG disclosure as a determinant of ITR.

The research contributes to literature in the stream of sustainability accounting, by adding new insights on ITR linked to SDG disclosure. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the originality of the study lies in the inclusion of SDG disclosure as a determinant for ITR that has not been analysed by academics yet.

Environmental, social and governance (ESG) disclosure has gained momentum in corporate reporting. Addressing a research gap on the subject, this paper aims to explore the theories involved in ESG disclosure studies, thereby shedding light on the dominant theoretical approaches and emerging perspectives that inform this type of disclosure.

A systematic review of 142 selected accounting studies published up to June 2023 devoted to ESG – and corporate social responsibility (CSR) – disclosure was conducted. The theories underlying these studies were examined through a descriptive performance analysis complemented by a systematic qualitative text analysis using RStudio and QDA Miner software tools.

The study reveals that five dominant theories stand out among the overall 32 found: stakeholder theory first, followed by legitimacy, institutional, agency and signaling theories. Theories are often combined into an integrated theoretical framework. The findings also show an array of minor constructs – many of them unconventional – that offer fresh perspectives for studying ESG disclosure, such as upper echelons, stakeholder salience, cognitive cost and reputation theories, among others.

This paper provides an original literature contribution by offering a comprehensive overview of the mainstream and niche theoretical perspectives underpinning accounting studies focused on ESG disclosure, with a nuanced scope of discussion on the use of ESG/CSR terms.

This review aims to summarize the extent to which sustainability dimensions are covered in the selected qualitative literature, the theoretical and ontological underpinnings that have informed sustainability research and the qualitative methodologies used in that literature.

This study uses a systematic review to examine prior empirical studies in sustainability reporting between 2000 and 2021.

This review contributes to sustainability research by identifying unexplored and underexplored areas for future studies, such as Indigenous people’s rights, employee health and safety practice, product responsibility, gender and leadership diversity. Institutional and stakeholder theories are widely used in the selected literature, whereas moral legitimacy remains underexplored. The authors suggest that ethnographic and historical research will increase the richness of academic research findings on sustainability reporting.

This review is limited to qualitative studies only because its richness allows researchers to apply various methodological and theoretical approaches to understand engagement in sustainability reporting practice.

This review follows a novel approach of bringing the selected studies’ scopes, theories and methodologies together. This approach permits researchers to formulate a research question coherently using a logical framework for a research problem.