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This research is one of the first studies to examine the effects of CSR disclosures on a firm’s decision to purchase back their own shares of stocks. Additionally, the authors examine whether the effect of CSR disclosures is stronger than the effect of CSR performance on the decision to repurchase shares. Examining firms in the United States, the authors find that total CSR disclosures and the CSR disclosures related to the dimensions of social, environmental, and governance are significantly and positively related to the number of shares that a firm buys back. Additionally, the authors find that the effects of CSR disclosures are stronger for total and the CSR dimensions of social and governance than for CSR performance. For the environmental dimension of CSR, both disclosure and performance scores are significant. This research expands our understanding of the impact of CSR disclosure by showing the importance it plays in the decision to buy back stock and implies that firms that repurchase their stock are more socially responsive than firms that do not. Finally, it contributes to the growing literature on how CSR disclosure has a different impact than CSR performance on firm decisions and outcomes.

In addition to their profit maximization objective, firms are often challenged to meet environmental and social demands. The purpose of this paper is to test whether a firm’s macroeconomic environment moderates the efficiency of its social and environmental disclosures.

The study uses the Bloomberg database to collect data on the FTSE 350 listed firms for the years 2007-2012. The sample is split into crisis and post-crisis periods, to study the investor reaction to social disclosures under different economic conditions.

The results suggest that the effect of corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure on future firm performance depends on the surrounding macroeconomic environment. During tight economic situations, market participants become more self-centered and penalize firms diverting scarce resources toward non-profitable societal engagements. Moreover, the findings indicate that firms with a high participation of outside directors and low accounting profit experience negative future performance when engaging in social disclosures during times of crisis.

Corporate governance is a system of interconnected practices that is affected by various firm and environmental characteristics. The results are in line with the premise that, depending on macroeconomic changes and specific firm attributes, CSR reporting may have dissimilar implications across different situations and conditions. Social disclosures and engagements are not always favorable, and should only be utilized in non-recessionary periods by firms possessing certain characteristics in terms of board composition and accounting profitability.

This study identifies key moderating variables which present additional obstacles for firms engaging in CSR during adverse economic conditions. Outsiders’ inferior firm-specific expertise, along with the firm’s poor accounting performance, present additional financial constraints for firms engaging in CSR activities during economic downturns.

The purpose of this paper is to establish the relationship between environmental‒social disclosure scores and corporate financial performance. The authors tried to investigate the relevance of assurance practice (whether or not companies’ assessment policies are subject to individual assessment for the given period) and value relevance in foreign-owned firms.

This research is based on accounting-based valuation model proposed by Berthelot et al. (2003), considering the market value of equity as the function of book value and other financial indicators including Return of Assets and Return on Capital Employed. Environmental and social disclosure scores are extracted from Bloomberg database as the measure of company’s transparency in reporting value relevance information and sustainable development. The study considers the sample period of 8 years (2008‒15) and uses static (fixed effects and random effects) and dynamic (generalised methods of moments (GMM)) panel data estimations for analysing and concluding results.

The results support the evidence of environmental disclosure score as performance relevance indicator. Environmental disclosure score highlights the positive and significant relationship with different performance indicators. The interaction between foreign ownership and environmental disclosure represents a negative association, implying that foreign ownership is incubating more on profit making rather than environmental protection initiatives. However, in the context of the social disclosure score, a positive association with economic performance is found. But interaction term between foreign ownership and social disclosure represented a negative coefficient.

Value relevance disclosures are investigated with performance indicators that create an incentive for stakeholders. Also, the effect of foreign ownership and value relevance interaction term on firm’s financial performance is determined. To the best of authors’ understanding, previous literature is silent about this dimension. The authors also tried to incorporate the solution to the endogeneity issue by using GMM.

This paper investigates the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and the economic performance of corporations. It first examines the theories that suggest a relationship between the two. To test these theories, measures of CSR performance and disclosure developed by the New Consumer Group were analysed against the (past, concurrent and subsequent to CSR performance period) economic performance of 56 large UK companies. Economic performance included: financial (return on capital employed, return on equity and gross profit to sales ratios); and capital market performance (systematic risk and excess market valuation). The results supported the conclusion that (past, concurrent and subsequent) economic performance is related to both CSR performance and disclosure. However, the relationships were weak and lacked an overall consistency. For example, past economic performance was found to partly explain variations in firms’ involvement in philanthropic activities. CSR disclosure was affected (positively) by both a firm’s CSR performance and its concurrent financial performance. Involvement in environmental protection activities was found to be negatively correlated with subsequent financial performance. Whereas a firm’s policies regarding women’s positions seem to be more rewarding in terms of positive capital market responses (performance) in the subsequent period. Donations to the Conservative Party were found not to be related to companies’ (past, concurrent or subsequent) financial and/or capital performance.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the interaction between mandatory disclosures and voluntary disclosures of banks and the information content of corporate disclosures on firm performance.

Based on the US-listed banks from 2007 to 2015, this paper examines the interplay among the fair-value measurement, corporate governance disclosure and voluntary social responsibility disclosure. In addition, the paper examines the extent of such disclosure of mandatory items (fair-value measurement) versus voluntary items (corporate governance and social responsibility issues) on banks’ performance in terms of their return on equity and return on asset.

This paper finds that banks with a higher social responsibility disclosure score and stronger corporate governance tend to have lower percentages of Level 3 fair-value assets. Banks with a higher Level 3 fair-value asset disclosure have a lower financial performance.

This paper provides evidence of the interplay of various corporate disclosures by banks and implies that banks use fair-value measurements to disguise their poor performance. The findings provide insights for the policymakers, investors and regulators to assess banks’ disclosure.

This paper extends the study of banks’ fair-value measurements and is the first study to examine the interaction between voluntary and mandatory disclosures. This study sheds lights on the theories of performativity, agency and stakeholder by demonstrating the information contents of corporate disclosures on firm performance.

This study aims to investigate the effects of environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance on financial risk disclosure of European companies. It analyzed the relationships between ESG factors and financial risk disclosure between 2010 and 2020.

To test their hypotheses in this study, the authors used the multivariate regression analysis on panel data using the Thomson Reuters ASSET4 database and the annual reports of 154 European companies listed in the ESG index between 2010 and 2020.

Empirical evidence shows a positive association between European companies' environmental and governance performance with financial risk disclosure, whereas social performance does not influence financial risk disclosure. Concerning the control variables, the findings demonstrate that firm size and profitability are significant factors in changing the financial risk disclosure. Nevertheless, firms’ leverage is insignificantly correlated with financial risk disclosure.

This study extends the stream of accounting literature by focusing on the financial risk disclosure, a topic that has received little attention in previous research. Furthermore, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is one of the first that provides ESG companies with evidence of the effect of ESG factors on financial risk disclosure in a developed market like Europe.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between corporate performance and social and environmental disclosure for two African leading countries namely, South Africa (common law country) and Morocco (civil law country).

The sample consists of 168 annual reports spanning from 2004 to 2009. A content analysis of companies’ annual reports is used to measure the extent of voluntary social and environmental disclosure.

Results show that social and environmental disclosure has a significant positive effect on corporate performance only in the South African setting.

The findings emphasize the need to explicitly consider the legal and institutional setting prevailing in each context. For instance, social and environmental organizations in South Africa enjoy more power to influence companies’ social and environmental reporting policy, whereas, their counterparts in Morocco, enjoy less power to place pressure on companies to incorporate social and environmental considerations into business operations.

This paper aims to determine whether financial performance is affected in firms adopting separately or jointly two sustainability tools (green innovation and environmental, social and governance reporting (ESG)).

The empirical study examines a sample of 211 S&P 500 firms over the 2011 to 2019 period and uses the quantile estimation method.

The results show that two dimensions of ESG disclosure (the social and governance dimensions) and green innovation positively affect financial performance. This result suggests that sustainability tools have a strong financial impact. The positive relationship between green innovation and financial performance is detected at the 10th quantile up to the 70th quantile. This finding suggests that financial performance needs a moderate investment in green innovation. When considering the joint effect of ESG disclosure and green innovation, our findings show that the positive impact of some ESG disclosure dimensions (social and governance) on financial performance is more observable with a moderate investment in green innovation.

This study highlights the prominent role of sustainability tools in financial performance. Despite the contributions of the literature, to our knowledge, the relationship between these tools and financial performance is not yet comprehensively investigated. Sustainability is less studied from the social movement perspective. This paper is among the few to study the effect of ESG reporting on financial performance in a world of green innovation.

The research aims to empirically investigate the determinants of the breadth of the corporate social disclosure (CSD).

The study adopts a multi-perspective approach, referring to different theoretical frameworks on CSD, such as the legitimacy theory, the stakeholder theory, the agency model, the asymmetric information theory, and the institutional perspective.

The empirical research is based on the sustainability reports of 80 companies in which investments were made by European socially responsible funds (SRFs) listed on the Morningstar platform during the years 2009–2008.

The theoretical hypotheses are tested by a univariate and multivariate analysis.

The breadth of the CSD depends on multiple factors, both external and internal, such as the country of origin, the industry reputation, the firm size, the frequency of the SRFs participation, the corporate social performance.

Limits inherent in this type of research are the comparability of the CSR reports and the systematization of the categories of content to be analyzed.

The chapter identifies several factors that lead to a greater completeness of the CSD, exploiting the capacity of the social reporting to trigger benefits for the firms such as a stronger social legitimacy and the reduction of asymmetric information.

The research supports the investigation of the levers of CSD to meet the demand for a broader accountability.

The reference to firms in which SRFs participated allows to focus on companies ascertained as socially responsible in accordance with a “certification function” of these funds. Findings support an approach which is not one-sided, thus enabling to look at the determinants of the CSD through different theoretical perspectives.

This study aims to investigate the effect of corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure on firm performance, considering both firm profitability and firm value in an emerging market, India.

The study examines the effect of CSR disclosure on firm performance using panel regressions for the final sample that consists of 386 companies listed in the BSE 500 index, India. It covers all major players in the capital market for ten years from 2007–2016.

The result shows a trend toward the negative effect of CSR disclosure on firm profitability and firm value in India; this negative effect is mainly influenced by environmental disclosure score and social disclosure score. An adverse effect of firm profitability and firm value on CSR disclosure is also observed to underline the inverse relationship.

The study provides implications to consumers, investors, managers and policymakers. Firstly, consumers have to be more aware of CSR initiatives of companies, and they should support those companies to do more. Secondly, investors can use the ESG disclosure score as a signal for the level of CSR activities, which negatively affects firm performance. Thirdly, managers have to consider CSR more seriously and spend CSR amount wisely after proper research and not just to meet the mandatory limit. In addition, managers have to take necessary actions to make the public aware of the CSR activities of the company to gain an advantage in the future. Finally, policymakers have to give more emphasis on the promotion of CSR activities to reach the ultimate consumers who lie in the remote areas of the country, and more awareness has to be given to them regarding CSR activities.

The findings contribute to the literature by providing insights on CSR disclosure and firm performance relationship in India, an emerging market with increasing international attention where such studies are scant and less clear, especially after the amendments in the Companies Act, 2013. Furthermore, the measurement of CSR disclosure using environmental, social and governance (ESG) score is novel in the Indian context.