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The paper attempts to determine whether market participants see value in the corporate choice to begin publishing a standalone sustainability report. It also seeks to investigate whether differences in market reactions are associated with the quality of the sustainability report.

The paper uses standard market model methods to isolate the unexpected change in market returns in the period surrounding the announcement of the release of a first‐time sustainability report.

The paper finds, on average, no significant market reaction to the announcement of the release of the sustainability reports. However, in cross‐sectional analyses, it is found that companies with the highest quality reports exhibited significantly more positive market reactions than companies issuing lower quality reports. These results hold when we control for firm size and membership in socially exposed industries.

The paper examines only the US firms and the measure of quality is based on an assessment of the extent to which reports provide disclosures recommended by the Global Reporting Initiative. The sample is also relatively small. Finally, the analysis examines perceived value for only one potential stakeholder group – shareholders. Future research could address any of these shortcomings.

The evidence suggests that companies seeking value from their sustainability reporting need to carefully consider the quality of their presentations.

The finding that quality of sustainability reporting is important to investors provides valuable evidence to support improvements in the implementation of sustainability accounting and reporting.

Algermissen, Virginia, Penny Billings, Sandra Grace, Barbara Guidry, and John Blair. “Subminute Telefacsimile for ILL Document Delivery.” Information Technology and Libraries, I (Sept., 1982), 274–5.

In recent years, public administration has been targeted by multiple reform efforts. In multiple instances, such initiatives have been ideologically couched in public-choice perspectives and entrenched beliefs that government is the problem. One unavoidable consequence of this continued bout of criticism is the fact that government currently has a noticeably decreased capacity of boosting creation of public value. Within this context, there certainly is an important need for approaches that would counterbalance the loss of public value induced by market fundamentalism. This article suggests that leadership, as a concept of theory and practice, due to its partial immunity to the private-public dichotomy, can provide a pragmatic avenue for nurturing public interest and public value within the devolution of governance, a declining trust in government and a diminished governmental capacity to propagate the creation of public value. While this article critically examines and assesses the capacity of different leadership perspectives in terms of creating and maximizing public value, its primary scope is not the provision of definite answers but rather the instigation of a much necessary discussion.