Search results

Previous studies have argued that the incapacity of the majority of SR stakeholders to identify the different types of assurance processes contributes to the existence of an expectation–performance gap and affects the credibility of such reports. To improve this situation, the Content Index Model was updated by the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) in its latest sustainability reporting guideline – “G4”. This paper aims to assess, using a qualitative exploratory approach, whether this updated Content Index Model changes the expectation–performance gap of stakeholders on assurance processes for GRI sustainability reports. This paper also assesses whether this Content Index Model improves the credibility of the assurance processes for GRI sustainability reports, considering participants’ points of view.

This paper used a qualitative approach to obtain participants’ perceptions in relation to the objectives of the paper. Two questions were used to assess whether the updated Content Index Model improves stakeholders’ understanding in regards to the assurance process of GRI sustainability reports, thus changing the expectation–performance gap and improving the credibility of GRI sustainability reports. The following questions were asked: Does the Content Index Model help SR stakeholders to better understand the scope of the assurance processes? and Why? Does the Content Index Model presented help to improve credibility of assured SR? and Why?

Results obtained demonstrate that the updated Content Index Model improves SR stakeholders’ understanding regarding the scope of the assurance processes conducted, thus reducing their expectation–performance gap on assurance processes and improving the credibility of SR. Participants also commented on the relationship among transparency, understand ability, trust and credibility.

First, participants were responsible for identifying the group that best represents his/her professional experience. The fact that participants have professional experience in more than one of the groups identified in this research (assurers, reporters and readers) could have impacted on their perceptions regarding the assurance process. Second, the interviews do not rely on practical experience with the updated Content Index Model, rather, they rely on participants’ perceptions regarding the hypothetical use of this Content Index Model. Third, descriptive statistical analyses in this paper aim to illustrate participants’ perceptions rather than to develop robust statistically significant conclusions. Fourth, the main author of this paper developed the Content Index Model, and this may have impacted the responses of the participants and/or the analysis of data. Also, the specific geographic area where interviews were conducted, the selection technique used and the non-statistical significance of the analyses presented in this paper must be carefully interpreted and cannot be generalised to a broader context based on this paper alone. Finally, interviews were developed and conducted before May 2013, before the GRI officially launched the GRI G4 Sustainability Reporting Guidelines.

As the GRI is the most commonly used sustainability report framework to date, this study has the possibility to affect all companies that publish their sustainability reports based on the GRI framework and all assurance providers currently providing assurance services for such report. Also, findings would be very useful for sustainability reports’ readers worldwide.

As sustainability reports are the most common instruments used by organisations to provide accountability about the environmental and social performance, and assurance is the most common instrument used by organisations to improve credibility of such reports; it is important to assess whether those instruments are achieving their goals and understand the role played by the GRI G4 Content Index Model in this context. As the GRI G4 was recently launched, there is no study published yet assessing the effectiveness of its new content index model.

The purpose of this paper is to identify and synthesize the current academic literature on emerging trends to increase CSR reporting credibility.

This paper synthesizes literature on emerging trends to increase CSR reporting credibility from the past ten years, focusing mainly on the most recent five years, by searching ABI/Inform and Business Source Premier for academic papers containing the following keywords: Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Reporting, CSR, Sustainability, and Social Responsibility.

This paper identifies four relatively unexplored trends to improve CSR credibility: CSR assurance, integrated reporting, CSR reporting standards, and CSR regulation.

This study will be of use to academic researchers to facilitate research and discussion on the credibility of CSR disclosure.

Regulatory agencies, boards of directors, customers, suppliers, and investors are increasingly using CSR information for decision making; therefore the credibility of the information is important.

Much of the extant research investigating CSR has focused on financial performance metrics. The study synthesizes the recent CSR literature, including some interdisciplinary research focusing on emerging accountability trends in reporting. The authors identify several research opportunities that will enhance the authors’ understanding of CSR reporting.

This paper aims to investigate the extent of shareholder engagement and satisfaction with corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports of a Chinese-owned company compared to an Australian-owned company in the Australian mining industry. The study is motivated by the speed, extent and nature of Chinese foreign direct investment in Australia, the resulting negative social attitudes and the impact on the perceptions of a report’s credibility.

The authors conducted a survey of 202 minority shareholders of two Australian mining companies, one has a Chinese majority shareholder and the other an Australian majority shareholder. The responses highlight users’ comparative perceptions of corporate motivations for reporting, the level of perceived shareholder power over reporting decisions and the resulting propensity to read CSR reports.

The authors found that, contrary to decision-usefulness theory, which posits that users will read CSR reports only if they are deemed to be reliable, that perceptions of poor credibility and poor CSR performance actually result in a higher propensity to read the reports. This suggests that the minority shareholders of the Chinese acquired firm are using reports to monitor the level of corporate accountability.

The findings have implications for firms operating in politically or socially sensitive industries that are likely to use CSR reporting as a legitimising strategy. The paper also provides guidance to regulators in the provision of information, which is meaningful to minority shareholders.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how sustainability assurance providers’ (SAPs) promotion of sustainability assurance influences the scope of engagements, its implications for professional and managerial capture and the ability of sustainability assurance to promote credible reporting.

The authors conducted in-depth interviews with sustainability reporting managers (SRMs) and SAPs in Australia and New Zealand, using an institutional work lens to focus the analysis.

At the start of a new assurance engagement, SAPs offer pre-assurance and flexible assurance scopes, allowing them to recruit clients on narrow-scoped engagements. These narrow-scoped engagements focus on disclosed content and limit SAPs’ ability to add value and enhance credibility. During assurance engagements, SAPs educate managers and encourage changing the norms underlying sustainability reporting. At the end of the assurance engagement, SAPs provide a management report demonstrating added-value of assurance and encouraging clients broader-scoped engagements. However, with each assurance engagement, the recommendations offer diminishing returns, often leading managers to question the value of broad-scoped engagements and to consider narrowing the scope to realize savings. Under these conditions, client pressure (potentially managerial capture) along with practitioners’ desires to grow assurance income (potentially professional capture) can affect SAPs’ independence and the quality of their assurance work.

The study implies that regulation mandating the scope of engagements may be called for.

The authors contribute to the research literature in several ways. First, the findings show how professional and managerial capture occurs before, during and at the end of the assurance process. The authors highlight how perceived value addition from sustainability assurance diminishes over time and how this impacts the scope of engagements (with implications for SAPs independence and the quality of assurance work). The authors show these findings in a table, clarifying the complicated interrelationships. Second, the authors contribute to theory by identifying a new form of institutional work. Third, unlike previous studies focused on SAPs, the authors provide insights from the perspectives of both SAPs and SRMs.

The purpose of this study is to contribute with knowledge about how valid research data in biodiversity citizen science are produced through information practices and how notions of credibility and authority emerge from these practices.

Data were collected through an empirical, interview-based study of the information practices of 15 participants active in the vicinity of the Swedish biodiversity citizen science information system Artportalen. Interview transcripts were analysed abductively and qualitatively through a coding scheme by working back and forth between theory and data. Values of credibility, authority and validity of research data were unfolded through a practice-oriented perspective to library and information studies by utilising the theoretical lens of boundary objects.

Notions of credibility, authority and validity emerge through participant activities of transforming species observations to data, supplementing reports with objects of trust, augmenting identification through authority outreach and assessing credibility via peer monitoring. Credibility, authority and validity of research data are shown to be co-constructed in a distributed fashion by the participants and the information system.

The article extends knowledge about information practices in emerging, heterogeneous scholarly settings by focussing on the complex co-construction of credibility, authority and validity in relation to data production.

This study aims to investigate the factors that enhance the credibility of and confidence in audit value.

Data were collected from 254 institutional investors through a questionnaire survey and were analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM).

The findings reveal that the two influential predictors of enhanced credibility and confidence are perceived auditor independence and improved auditor communication. Factors related to auditor–client affiliation, such as restrictions on providing non-audit services, mandatory auditor rotation and the presence of effective audit committees, are identified as creating the perceived independence. Improved auditor communication is linked with improving the audit report and ensuring audit education, thus creating more sophisticated users who better understand the scope and purpose of an audit. Furthermore, independent audit oversight acts as a moderator in the relationship between perceived auditor independence, improved auditor communication and enhanced credibility. Enhanced credibility can lead to greater confidence in audit value.

In the wake of the global financial crisis and loss of confidence in the role of auditors, this study investigates the factors that can enhance the credibility of and confidence in audit value, especially in a non-Anglo-American setting. This study is unique in terms of methodological development, as it uses a higher-order Type II reflective–formative model using PLS-SEM.

Credibility concerns regarding integrated reports can harm the intended decrease of information asymmetry between a firm and its investors. Therefore, it is crucial to examine whether voluntary third-party assurance enhances the credibility of integrated reports and, thus, decreases information asymmetry. Furthermore, this study aims to investigate the interaction effect between assurance quality and the disclosed connectivity of the capitals, a distinguishing feature of integrated reports.

Content analysis is performed of the 176 assurance statements included in the 269 integrated reports of Forbes Global 2000 firms disclosed from 2013 to 2015 and the 269 integrated reports themselves. Regression analyzes are applied to examine the associations between assurance, the disclosed connectivity of the capitals and information asymmetry.

The presence of an assurance statement in an integrated report significantly decreases information asymmetry. Surprisingly, assurance quality is not significantly associated with information asymmetry. However, an interaction analysis reveals that combining high assurance quality with high disclosed connectivity of the capitals allows a significant decrease in information asymmetry.

The paper demonstrates that the connectivity of the capitals of integrated reports and assurance quality are connected and together are associated with information asymmetry.

The results imply, both for report preparers and standard setters, that assurance quality is advantageous only when combined with disclosed connectivity of the capitals.

More information on non-financial information measured by the connectivity of the capitals of integrated reporting has an interaction effect together with assurance quality on information asymmetry.

This paper builds on a unique data set derived from the contents of integrated reports and accompanying assurance statements. Furthermore, it extends the integrated reporting literature by investigating the interaction between assurance quality and the disclosed connectivity of the capitals, which had not previously been examined in combination.

The aim of this paper is to examine the effects of the European Non-financial Reporting Directive (2014/95/EU) on firms' sustainability reporting practices, especially reporting quantity (i.e. availability of information) and quality (i.e. comparability and credibility).

To test the main hypotheses, the authors select 905 treated firms from the EU 28 + 2 countries for a difference-in-differences regression analysis of dependent variables from the Refinitiv ESG database.

The results suggest that the Directive influences sustainability reporting quantity and quality. Treated firms provide around 4 percentage points more sustainability information (i.e. availability) than propensity score matched control firms and are 19 percent more likely to receive external assurance (i.e. credibility). However, we also find that the Directive is not the decisive factor in the adoption of GRI guidelines (i.e. comparability).

The analysis is restricted to large listed firms and does not account for small, mid-sized and private firms. Further, cross-cultural differences which influence sustainability reporting are controlled for but not investigated in detail. The authors derive several suggestions for future research related to the NFR Directive and its revision.

The authors’ findings have practical implications for the future development of sustainability reporting in the EU and for other regulators considering the adoption of sustainability reporting.

This study is the first to provide evidence on the NFR Directive's reporting effects across multiple countries. It adds to the growing literature on the consequences of mandatory sustainability reporting. Additionally, this paper introduces a novel measurement approach sustainability information quantity that could benefit researchers.

To obtain opinions of Chartered Accountants (CAs) on the need for verifying environmental statements produced by a concern and desired status and qualifications of experts doing such an audit. To examine EIA systems of large manufacturing companies operating in India.

Primary data collected by using two structured questionnaires: the first one to obtain opinions of CAs and the second one to examine EIA practices followed by the selected companies.

The users think that companies should produce duly verified environmental reports to increase credibility of these reports. They prefer appointment of a team of external duly qualified environmental auditors for this purpose. Majority of the sample companies prepare only statutorily required environmental statements. Most of these companies claim that they provide audited information in these statements verified generally by external environmental auditors.

Some of the respondents gave incomplete answers for not disclosing their organizational policies because of perceived sensitive nature of environmental issues. Non‐manufacturing and small companies not included in the sample.

Make EIA mandatory at least in major polluting industries. An urgent need to develop standards covering the scope and limitations of third party EIAs was realised. Companies should also voluntarily try to provide audited environmental information in the annual reports to build credibility and trust among corporate stakeholders.

The paper presents empirical evidence from interviews with CAs and executives from the selected companies in India and provides insight into the need for EIA.

This study aims to review the literature on non-financial information (NFI) assurance including external assurance of sustainability reports (SRA) and integrated reports (IRA). The objectives are as follows: provide an overview of academic research; understand the nature of NFI assurance engagements by organising the literature around the five key elements of an assurance engagement; develop a framework for understanding NFI assurance; and provide directions for future research.

The study undertakes a structured literature review of 179 articles published from 1999 to 2023.

The review identified 324 researchers located in 35 different countries who published 179 articles on SRA and IRA. The researchers, their locations, journals, methods, theories and themes are examined. The literature is structured around the definition of an assurance engagement including a tripartite arrangement, subject matter, a suitable criterion, sufficient appropriate evidence and a written assurance report. A framework for understanding NFI assurance is offered. Avenues for future research, structured around the five elements of an assurance engagement, are presented.

Researchers will benefit from an overview of the literature and guidance on areas for future research. Lecturers can use the findings to develop content for their auditing courses. Reporting managers will benefit from a better understanding of this new form of assurance. Regulators can use this study’s insights to better inform the development of laws and corporate governance codes mandating NFI assurance. Standard setters can use these findings to guide the emergence of the new assurance standards. Assurance practitioners may use this research to inform practice.

The findings may prove useful in addressing capture, which deters NFI assurance from enhancing disclosure credibility and fulfilling its transparency and accountability role. This is to the detriment of the wider society.

The consolidation of the literature around the five key elements of an assurance engagement is unique. The framework devised offers useful insights into the dynamics of assurance generally and NFI assurance more specifically. The study is timely given the new European Union regulations on NFI reporting and assurance and the work of the International Audit and Assurance Standards Board in developing a specialist NFI assurance standard.