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This study analyses the scope of social and environmental reporting from the perspective of integrating it in financial reporting and comments on a new approach regarding the presentation of social and environmental information in the annual reports from Romanian companies’ perspective.

A literature review introduces and justifies the second part of the research. The latter is organised as an exploratory study based on interviews. It presents the current state of Romanian companies’ availability for reconsidering financial reporting from the perspective of corporate social responsibility.

While social and environmental involvement of Romanian companies is at an early stage, there is a basis for future development of corporate reporting by addressing social and environmental aspects. We noticed that companies have the tendency of responding rather to a mandatory framework than a voluntary one.

The limitations of the research are linked to the study population. The small number of Romanian companies that publicly manifest interest for social responsibility determined the choice of a qualitative instead of a quantitative research.

The exploratory study based on the case of Romania accompanies the present state of non-financial versus financial reporting in order to highlight measurable and non-measurable, but relevant, information to be considered in a future reporting framework.

The study advances new lines in accounting research by confronting the national and international perspectives of social and environmental reporting. Debates and arguments on the research results add value and utility to the research.

There are still many different theoretical approaches and practical interpretations about what an integrated report is. Starting from this premise, the overall purpose of this chapter is to critically analyze the relationship between integrated reporting (IR) and social/sustainability disclosure. Indeed, although some scholars considered IR as a tool to improve the sustainability approach of the companies allowing to disclose more relevant social information, others are more critical about the potentiality of IR to improve social disclosure. Therefore, the general research question is: Is there a natural link between IR and social disclosure (true love) or is the IR a practice to “normalize” the social disclosure and accounting (forced marriage)?

In the attempt to provide a preliminary answer to the research question, the chapter analyzes what is the approach of three categories: (1) academics; (2) soft-regulators; and (3) companies. From the methodological point of view, a mixed method of analysis has been adopted.

From the analysis of the three different points of view, IR can be considered as a “contested concept” because of the heterogeneous and sometimes conflicting interpretations and implementation that are done on this type of report. This leads to relevant theoretical and practical implications.

Nowadays, social and environmental reporting is approached in different ways, paths and fields by either large-, small-, or medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). However, as demonstrated by previous scholars, SMEs have been critically discussed because they provide lack of proper sustainability disclosure. The fact that the predominant approach of SMEs toward social responsibility is often “sunken” and not “explicit” can drive the lack of disclosure. Furthermore, unstructured communication practices create difficulties in measuring and reporting the sustainability reporting phenomenon in SMEs. The aim of our study is to shed light on the activity of SMEs’ sustainability reporting and disclosure, specifically, by addressing the variables that influence the choice of the guidelines used to prepare sustainability reports.

The research has been carried out by using qualitative and quantitative methodologies. The empirical evidence is based on all the Italian companies, mostly SMEs, that were certified in 2011 as having adopted both environmental (i.e., ISO14001 or EMAS) and social (i.e., SA8000) management systems. A multivariate linear regression model has been developed to address the influence of several variables (i.e., financial performance, size, time after achievement of the certifications, group/conglomerate control, etc.) on the guidelines’ choice for preparing sustainability reports.

Our findings demonstrate that SMEs prefer to use simple guidelines such as those guidelines that are mandatory under management system certifications. However, the sustainability disclosure driven by the adoption of international guidelines may be more complex if the SME is controlled within a group of companies or if a significant amount of time has passed since the certification date. As such, we developed a taxonomy of their different behavioral drivers according to a legitimacy theory approach.

At this stage, our study didn’t focus on the contents’ quality of the disclosure and reporting practices adopted by SMEs, which is obviously a worthwhile and important area for further research. Furthermore, the analysis took into account the impact of a number of easily accessible variables; therefore, it can be extended to investigate the effect on disclosure of other relevant variables (i.e., nature of the board of directors, age, and industrial sector in which the company operates) as well as contexts prevailing in other countries.

The study represents an important contribution for understanding how and why managers might use externally focused disclosure on social and environmental issues to benefit the company’s legitimacy.

Our study provides interesting insights for policy makers who require social or environmental certification when calling for tenders or specific EU contracts, in order to put aside the “brand” or “symbol” and really focus on the disclosed practices.

Previous studies have provided only a few evidence about reporting practices and related influencing features of SMEs’ sustainability actions. As such, the study wishes to make a significant contribution to the existing literature on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) by providing relevant insights about the factors which influence the guidelines used by SMEs in preparing their sustainability reports.

The belief that modern organisations have responsibility for their stakeholders, community and society has existed for many decades (Carroll & Shabana, 2010). In this context, there is increasing demand for the non-financial factors (e.g. corporate social responsibility (CSR), natural and human capitals) from stakeholders for making the appropriate business decision (Eccles & Saltzman, 2011). This information of the organisation is therefore required to not only disclose relevant and reliable information, but also monitor corporate executives.

In the other side, corporation reports are criticised as they do not provide the whole business picture of the way organisations organise financial and non-financial elements to creating value yet. It has ignored or reported just a part of the environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) impact made by an organisation (Flower, 2015). As a consequence, there has been a call for improving firm report on environmental, CSR and corporate governance in particular, and additional factors that can potentially impact on business performance in general.

Recently, various corporation reports related to environmental, social activities and sustainability have been introduced, and integrated reporting (IR) is one of them. IR framework is introduced as a new standard for corporate communication. It is ‘a concise communication about how an organisation’s strategy, governance, performance and prospects lead to the creation of value over the short, medium and long term’. A number of important outcomes are attributed to IR including satisfying the information needs of stakeholders and driving organisational change towards more sustainable outcomes (Eccles & Krzus, 2010); reducing reputational risk and allowing companies to make better financial and non-financial decisions; and helping to break down operational and reporting silos in organisations and improving systems and processes (Stubbs & Higgins, 2012). Since the IR emphasise the integration of financial and non-financial data into one report, it calls for experience and knowledge from not only the board as management role but also accountant as practice role to deal with this emerging issue.

This chapter considers the problem of the link between how to reporting the ESG information, the management role board and practice role of accountants in organisation to successfully embed ESG information into the overall corporation strategy. We identify the issues with the demand of ESG information from stakeholders and the lack of connecting and integrating the environmental and corporate social sustainability information into organisation report. We explore the development of IR and integrated thinking (InTh) and the opportunities for board in integrating ESG information into practices and eliminating the ESG and reputational risks. Finally, we consider how management accountant via adopting IR and practising InTh can act as the important role in providing and delivering the better ESG information to stakeholders.

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) reporting has been widely accepted as a vital tool for communicating with stakeholders on a range of social, environmental, and governance issues, but how companies define, interpret, apply, integrate, and communicate their CSR efforts and impacts in corporate reporting is anything but a straightforward task. The purpose of this chapter is to explore the concept of materiality in CSR reporting and demonstrate practical examples of good CSR and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) reporting practices. We chose the aviation industry because of its economic relevance, constant growth, and future expected changes in the aftermath of COVID-19. In addition, airlines affect many of the SDGs directly and indirectly with contending results. This chapter is timely because of the growing willingness by companies to integrate CSR and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) thinking into the corporate strategy and business operations using materiality assessment and enhancing their competitive advantage and ability to maintain long-term value and because ESG and ethical investing have become part of the mainstream investing. Thus, this chapter contributes to an understanding of the wide range of existing and new reporting frameworks and regulations and reinforces the importance of discussing how this diversity of approaches can affect the work toward worldwide comparability of CSR and sustainability reporting.

This chapter explores the adaptation and evolution of stand-alone CSR reporting in two different political economies and late-capitalist countries: Brazil and South Korea. Instead of selecting between new institutionalism and the varieties of capitalism (VOC) approach, this study attempts to explore how the interaction between converging and diverging pressures appears in the adaptation and evolution of stand-alone CSR reporting (i.e., cross-fertilization process) in two countries.

Using qualitative content analysis this study focuses on the frameworks of CSR reports and the way CSR issues are described within the stand-alone CSR reports of four telecommunication companies in Brazil and South Korea.

Even though CSR reports in both countries have become similar due to the convergence of frameworks of CSR reporting, the key themes and the representation on each theme are still embedded within each form of market economy: a hierarchical market economy (HME) in Brazil and a network market economy (NME) in South Korea. From a cross-fertilization perspective, this chapter shows that the adaptation and evolution of CSR reporting occurs at two different levels of CSR reporting.

This study has three major values. First, it explains the two different levels of the adaptation and evolution process of CSR reporting by bringing a dynamic cross-fertilization view. Second, it provides a qualitative study that focuses on the content of CSR disclosures instead of the quantity of those disclosures. Lastly, it contributes to the academic and practical research on CSR in late-capitalist countries and in two under-researched types of political economies.

This paper provides a review of the progress made in both academic literature and corporate practice over the last forty years. Although there has been an increase in the number of companies producing social and environmental reports, the quality of the disclosures has not increased. Further, there is little evidence of progress in the integration of social and environmental impacts into management decisions. The paper provides suggestions on research needs to increase the integration of social and environmental impacts into management decisions and improve both the internal reporting and external disclosures and accountability of corporations.

This chapter discusses and investigates the sustainability reporting across different sectors. The first section discusses and investigates the relationship between sustainability reporting and primary sector's performance (Agriculture and Food Industries Sector and Energy Sector). The second section discusses and investigates the relationship between sustainability reporting and secondary sector's performance (Manufacturing Sector). The final section discusses and investigates the relationship between sustainability reporting and tertiary sector's performance (Banks and Financial Services Sector, Retail Sector, Telecommunication and Information Technology Sector, and Tourism Sector).

Over the last few decades, corporate environmental reporting (CER) has received substantial attention due to complex societal and ecological challenges experienced at a global scale. While there has been growth in CER research across the world, we know very little of the state of CER research in Africa. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive literature review of CER in sub-Saharan Africa to demonstrate its current state, uncover gaps in extant studies and identify areas for further research in the region. We perform a metasearch on the Financial Times Top 50 journals in addition to wider analyses using African Journals Online (AJOL) and Google Scholar between 2008 and 2020. Though there is some progress in interrogating CER in the region, there is much leeway for further research into how public and private corporations provide an account for their interaction with nature. Extant studies have examined how CER is often subsumed within corporate social responsibility initiatives while other studies explore ways in which CER can provide accountability mechanisms in the mining sector of select countries. Important areas of future research include the influences of legal, cultural and political systems on the level of CER, the tensions between economic development driven by multinational corporations and the necessity for ecological protection. Finally, further research could investigate the role CER can play in encouraging specific corporate disclosures around GHG emissions, especially given global efforts being undertaken to mitigate the effects of climate change.