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Over the past two decades, there has been an increasing interest on corporate social responsibility by a number of constituencies – corporate managers, research scholars, policymakers and investors. In this context, corporate sustainability performance (CSP) has been a central focus of attention. This paper aims to analyze CSP determinants in Brazil, an important emerging market. Firm CSP is proxied by the membership to the Corporate Sustainability Index (ISE) which comprises environmental, social, economic and governance issues.

Logit panel data models are estimated for a sample of 2,685 firm-year observations in the period of 2006-2015.

Results show that firms operating in environmental risky industries tend to be leading CSP firms in Brazil which might be a positive consequence of the Brazilian environmental legislation that could be forcing such firms to be more committed to environmental issues. High ownership concentration reduces the probability of a firm’s membership to the ISE index signaling that large controlling blockholders may not see sustainability and governance concerns as relevant. Larger Brazilian firms and the ones with more growth opportunities tend to be CSP leaders. Additionally, the financial crisis of 2007-2009 had a negative effect on CSP in Brazil.

The implications of the present findings may be of interest to academics and firms’ stakeholders. The fact that firms from environmental risky industries exhibit higher concerns with CSP, probably because of the Brazilian environmental rules that has advanced in the past decades, show the prominence of policymakers in the critical scenario of environmental issues. When designing regulation, policymakers should be conscious of the importance of social issues and pay attention to all ways available to foster firm sustainability concerns. The additional evidence that dominant shareholders do not appear to see CSP as a relevant concern in Brazil points out an agency conflict in which large blockholders’ interests may be prevailing over other stakeholders’ interests. That is important to academics who study the role played by ownership structure on firm’s policies. Furthermore, larger firms, as well as the ones with more growth opportunities, seem to invest in CSP, possibly for seeing it as a way to generate competitive advantage.

As per the authors’ knowledge this is the first paper to point out the relevance of industry environmental sensitivity over firm’s commitment to sustainability issues in Brazil. Additional evidence is provided on the negative effect of ownership concentration on the probability of firm’s membership to the ISE sustainability index using a longer period as well as robust logit panel data model estimates compared to previous studies. Unlike previous works, the paper analyzes the complexity of a sustainability index in the Brazilian market. Such index comprises corporate social responsibility, sustainability and corporate governance concerns. This set of concerns makes it a complex index and requires a deeper rationale for the determinants of CSP as proxied by the membership to it, under the stakeholder and agency theoretical frameworks.

This study examines the factors which affect the adoption of corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure practices in line with Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) guidelines in Brazil's banking industry.

The analysis comprised the deposits (demand and savings), fee income, employee expenses, regulatory capital (Basel ratio) and ownership structure of all Brazilian banks from 2006 to 2017. The sample totalled 1,613 firm-year observations. The authors used three binary regression models (logit, probit and complementary log-log) in order to choose the one that best fits the model proposed. The authors controlled for size, profitability, leverage and liquidity.

The main results show positive relationships between CSR reporting and both savings deposits and fee income. The authors also found that state-owned (foreign private-owned) banks have a positive (negative) relationship with probability of CSR disclosure. A negative relationship was found between CSR disclosure and regulatory capital, indicating that banks are more likely to publish GRI reports as they approach the minimum levels of the Basel ratio.

Some banks may disclose CSR reports which do not adhere to the GRI guidelines; these were not captured in this study.

The estimated model aids understanding of factors influencing CSR disclosure in the banking industry in an emerging economy, which may help bank regulators to adopt new approaches in their supervisory and regulatory roles.

This work is the first to document that both fee income and banks' regulatory capital are related to CSR disclosure. Furthermore, this study investigates the entire banking industry of a Latin American country over the longest and most up-to-date period the authors are aware of.

We present a critical literature review debating Brazilian research on social and environmental accounting (SEA). The aim of this study is to understand the role of politics in the construction of hegemonies in SEA research in Brazil. In particular, we examine the role of hegemony in relation to the co-option of SEA literature and sustainability in the Brazilian context by the logic of development for economic growth in emerging economies. The methodological approach adopts a post-structural perspective that reflects Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse theory. The study employs a hermeneutical, rhetorical approach to understand and classify 352 Brazilian research articles on SEA. We employ Brown and Fraser’s (2006) categorizations of SEA literature to help in our analysis: the business case, the stakeholder–accountability approach, and the critical case. We argue that the business case is prominent in Brazilian studies. Second-stage analysis suggests that the major themes under discussion include measurement, consulting, and descriptive approach. We argue that these themes illustrate the degree of influence of the hegemonic politics relevant to emerging economics, as these themes predominantly concern economic growth and a capitalist context. This paper discusses trends and practices in the Brazilian literature on SEA and argues that the focus means that SEA avoids critical debates of the role of capitalist logics in an emerging economy concerning sustainability. We urge the Brazilian academy to understand the implications of its reifying agenda and engage, counter-hegemonically, in a social and political agenda beyond the hegemonic support of a particular set of capitalist interests.

The purpose of the paper is to examine the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and firm performance, taking into account firm value and financial accounting performance, in an emerging market – Brazil.

Content analysis was conducted to extract data from two different sources, one relative to CSR data and another that provided financial data. CSR indexes and financial performance measures were calculated to allow the estimation of regression analysis conducted to examine the relationship between CSR and performance.

The results indicate that CSR is value destroying in Brazil since a significant negative correlation between CSR and firm value was found. Additionally, a neutral relationship characterises the mutual effect between CSR and financial accounting performance.

The study has examined the relationship between CSR and firm performance in a country where, as in most other non‐developed markets, such a relationship has not been an object of research. Besides, the use of a three dimensional measure of CSR, mainly considering research undertaken in an emerging market, as a valuable contribution may be observed.

The Social Responsibility Journal (SRJ) celebrates 15 years of publication in 2019. The purpose of this study is to map the development in the publication, citation and themes of SRJ articles between 2005 and 2019.

This study uses the Scopus database to analyze the highest contributing authors, institutions and countries published in SRJ. It also identifies the most cited SRJ articles, journals citing SRJ and journals cited by SRJ. This study conducts a performance analysis using bibliometric indicators to analyze the publication and citation structure of SRJ, in addition to science mapping using bibliographic coupling to analyze the themes of SRJ. Further, this study provides a temporal analysis of SRJ publishing across three different time periods over its 15-year run.

From 2005 to 2019, SRJ increased its annual publication from 23 to 63 articles. The citations have followed a similar trend, with an increase from zero citations in 2005 to more than 1,200 citations in 2019. Authors from all around the world have contributed to the journal on themes like business ethics, corporate social responsibility, corporate governance, firm outcomes and stakeholders. Attention to themes related to corporate social responsibility, corporate governance and their influence on firm outcomes has increased across different time periods, while themes related to business ethics and stakeholders have garnered continuous – if not increasing – attention across different time periods.

This study is limited to data acquired from the Scopus database.

This study provides the first overview of SRJ’s publication and citation trends alongside its thematic structure.

The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of stakeholder pressure and corporate governance on the quality of sustainability report. This study uses environment, employee, consumer and shareholder as stakeholders, while board of commissioner effectiveness and family ownership are used as corporate governance components.

This research uses multiple regression method with total observations of 123 sustainability reports of listed firms on Indonesia Stock Exchange in 2010-2014.

The result shows that companies which get pressure from environment and consumer have higher quality of sustainability report than other firms. Pressure from employee positively affects the quality of sustainability report. Meanwhile, pressure from shareholders has no effect on the quality of sustainability report. Board of commissioner effectiveness positively affects the quality of sustainability report, and family ownership has no effect on the quality of sustainability report.

This research reveals how various types of stakeholders and corporate governance in Indonesia react to corporate social responsibility and thus influence the quality of sustainability report, which has not been discussed by previous studies.