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In recent times, stakeholders have called on corporate organizations especially those charged with governance to embrace full disclosure on non-financial issues, especially sustainability reporting. Based on this premise, this study aims to examine the influence of corporate board and assurance on sustainability reporting practices (SRP) of selected 80 firms from 8 countries in sub-Saharan Africa.

To measure the corporate board, the authors use both board variables and audit committee variables. Also, the authors adapted the sustainability score model as used by previous authors in the field of sustainability disclosure to measure SRPs. The analysis was done using both ordered logistic regression and probit regression models.

The results show that the combination of board corporate and assurance has a positive and significant impact on the sustainability reporting practice of selected firms in sub-Saharan Africa.

The study places emphasis on the need for strong collaboration between the corporate board and external assurance in evaluating and enhancing the quality of sustainability disclosure.

The study bridged the gap in the literature in the area of corporate board, assurance and SRP of corporate firms which has received little attention within sub-Saharan Africa.

This paper aims to examine the processes of sustainability reporting assurance (SRA) and the influence they have on shaping perception from disclosures. Given the evidence of inconsistencies and ambiguities in assurance processes, this paper examines how legitimacy is attained and maintained at different stages of SRA.

Evidence collected from 23 semi-structured interviews with assurance providers (APs), consultants, professionals and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) (non-APs) was used to conduct a thematic analysis from the perspectives of interviewees.

APs and non-APs are united in recognising the value of SRA, although, perspectives on transparency between the two groups differ. Experience and industry knowledge are essential to SRA delivery with non-APs preferring accounting APs. Nevertheless, non-APs are concerned about the role of companies in deciding assurance scope, as it can affect scrutiny. APs favour data accuracy (as opposed to data relevance) assurance due to team dynamics and internal review influences, with the latter also restricting assurance innovation. APs are interested in accessing better evidence and stakeholder engagement evaluations. Providing advisory services was not rejected by all APs. The perspectives of APs and non-APs demonstrate how progress in SRA has gained pragmatic legitimacy with noticeable gaps that serve to undermine attainment of moral legitimacy.

SRA is a developing practice that will adopt changes as it continues to mature; some of these changes could impact findings in this research. General perspectives on SRA were sought from interviewees, this affected the ability for an in-depth focus on any of the range of interesting SRA issues that arose over the course of the research. Interviews were conducted with relevant parties in the SRA space that operate in the UK. Perspectives from parties outside the UK were not solicited.

Companies make an important decision to commission SRA. Findings in this research have highlighted specific non-APs issues of concern that can be useful in structuring operations and reporting regimes to facilitate assurance procedures. The findings will also be helpful to APs as they can direct more emphasis on stakeholder concerns towards demonstrating greater stakeholder accountability. Regulatory and standard setters can enact appropriate policies that can potentially drive the practice forward for assessment of cognitive legitimacy.

The findings provide relevant account of stakeholder voices on the quality of corporate disclosures that has a direct effect on the wellbeing of communities and sustainability of societies. Collective stakeholder input on expectations can shape sustainability discourse.

This research demonstrates the applicability of financial audit quality indicators in SRA processes, extends the debate around the effectiveness of new audit fields and highlights the challenges of maintaining legitimacy with different audiences.

This paper aims to examine sites of dissonance or consensus between global investor responses to the draft standards, International Financial Reporting Standards S1 (IFRS) (General Requirements for Disclosure of Sustainability-related Financial Information) and IFRS S2 (Climate-related Disclosures), issued by the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB).

A thematic content analysis was used to capture investor views expressed in their comment letters submitted in the consultation period (March to July 2022) in comparison to the ex ante position (issue of draft standards, March 2022) and ex post summary feedback (ISSB staff papers, September 2022) of the ISSB.

There was investor consensus in support of the ISSB and the development of the draft standards. However, there were sites of dissonance between investors and the ISSB, notably regarding the basis and focus of reporting (double or single/financial materiality and enterprise value); definitional clarity; emissions reporting; and assurance. Incrementally, the research further highlights that investors display heterogeneity of opinion.

The ISSB standards will provide a framework for future sustainability reporting. This research highlights the significance of such reporting to investors through their responses to the draft standards. The findings reveal sites of dissonance in the development and alignment of draft standards to user needs. The views of investors, as primary users, should help inform the development of sustainability-related standards by a global standard-setting body apposite to current policy and future reporting requirements, and their usefulness to users in practice.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper makes an original contribution to the comment letter literature, hitherto focused on financial reporting with a relative lack of investor engagement. Using thematic analysis, sites of dissonance are examined between the views of investors and the ISSB on their development of sustainability reporting standards.

This study examines how assurors make sense of sustainability assurance (SA) work and how interactions with assurance team members and clients shape assurors’ sensemaking and their actual SA work.

To obtain detailed accounts of how SA work occurs on the ground, this study explores three SA engagements by interviewing the main actors involved, both at the client firms and at their Big Four assurance providers.

Individual assurors’ (i.e. partners and other team members) sensemaking of SA work results in the crafting of their logics of action (LoAs), that is, their meanings about the objectives of SA work and how to conduct it. Without organizational socialization, team members may not arrive at shared meanings and deviate from the team-wide assurance approach. To fulfill their objectives for SA work, assurors may engage in socialization with clients or assume a temporary role. Yet, the role negotiations taking place in the shadows of the scope negotiations determine their default role during the engagement.

Two options are available to help SA statement users gauge the relevance of SA work: either displaying the SA work performed or making it more uniform.

This study theoretically grounds how assurors make sense of SA work and documents how (the lack of) professional socialization, organizational socialization and socialization of frequent interaction partners at the client shape actual SA work. Thereby, it unravels the SA work concealed behind SA statements.

This study aims to examine the effect of sustainability report quality (SRQ) on information risk. This research also aims to examine the effect of SRQ on stock market participation through information risk.

The research sample includes 120 firm-years listed on the Sri Kehati Index period of 2017–2021. The hypothesis test uses firm and industry effect regression analysis. SRQ is measured by the existence of a sustainability committee and external assurance. The information risk is measured by bid-ask spread. Stock market participation is measured by volume of stock trading.

Based on the data analysis, this investigation finds that SRQ reduces information risk. This research also finds that SRQ improves stock market participation by reducing information risk.

First, this examination gives new evidence of SRQ to promote information environment improvement. Second, this examination contributes to providing the role of SRQ in an emerging market, such as Indonesia. Third, this examination contributes to providing the evaluation standard for sustainability reporting quality in Indonesia, since Indonesia has no specific standard for the sustainability report. Fourth, this examination contributes to filling the previous gap.

The current study aims to analyze the role of International Federation of Accountants (IFAC) in sustainability issues and its impact on the attitude of practitioners (auditors) in industrial companies. The current study relies on the analytical method, one of the tools of the inductive approach, by examining the literature of researchers, international and local organizations, publications, series, alerts, and topics dealt with by the IFAC, as well as reviewing studies, theoretical and applied research, periodicals, books, and statistics. And specialized publications for this subject, which is related to other sciences – such as – environmental science, economic, and political sciences. The study reached many results, the most important of which are: (1) The first half of the current decade has seen high interest from the IFAC, has led to the issuance of International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board (IAASB) international standard on assurance engagements 3410, (GHG) Statements. (2) Sustainability has become important to a growing number of enterprises, and may have a significant influence, in certain cases, the financial statements, also became the sustainability of the topics under increasing attention from users of financial statements. Thus, the financial statements will need a practitioner to take into consideration sustainability issues and a private greenhouse gas when auditing the financial statements. This study is distinguished by analyzing the role of the IFAC and the IAASB for the period from 1998 to 2023 regarding sustainability issues.

This study investigates CSR reporting’s role in debt access and cost of debt with the moderating role of external assurance and GRI adoption in emerging markets. Such an investigation will help facilitate external fund flow to firms in better terms.

We collected data from 16 emerging markets between 2008 and 2019 from the Thomson Reuters Eikon and ran fixed effects regression analysis and robustness tests by addressing endogeneity concerns, adopting alternative sample and integrating additional control variables.

The results show that CSR reporting has a positive association with access to debt and a negative association with the cost of debt. Furthermore, both external assurance and GRI adoption do not significantly moderate between CSR reporting and access to debt and cost of debt. Hence, creditors in emerging markets are not interested in CSR report assurance and GRI framework adoption and do not integrate them into their lending decisions.

Emerging markets are unique settings characterized by high growth rates, limited capital availability, high debt costs and weak institutional environments. Thus, reaching debt with convenient conditions is critical for emerging market firms to finance their growth. Hence, our study will help emerging market firms reach external funding more easily and in better terms via CSR transparency. Besides, our investigation is based on a broad sample of emerging markets, and hence updates prior emerging market studies conducted in single-country settings. Lastly, we test the complementarity of third-party assurance and GRI adoption to CSR reporting in loan contracting.

This study aims to examine the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) award and sustainability assurance levels for the French CAC 40 companies.

A sample of 57 French companies in the CAC 40 index corresponding to 448 observations was analyzed between 2008 and 2020 using an ordinal regression.

The main results conclude that the inclusion in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index World, the CSR award and the introduction of the Grenelle 2 law have a significant influence on sustainability assurance levels. However, incentive compensation does not appear to be relevant to explain sustainability assurance levels.

The present study focuses on a sample, limited to companies belonging to the CAC 40 index. To enhance the understanding of sustainability assurance levels, this research may include other global sustainability indices, such as the MSCI World and the FTSE4Good World, in the CSR awards.

This study could be useful for audit practitioners, leading them to reconsider their evaluation methods and take into account CSR incentives for a more objective analysis. Regulators should investigate the current CSR issues to improve CSR disclosure standards. Finally, these findings could motivate other researchers to expand the scope of the research to diverse contexts.

This study helps fill the gap existing in sustainability assurance literature by highlighting the relationship between CSR rewards and sustainability assurance levels.

The primary objective of this research is to chronicle how the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and other United States Federal Government Agencies (USFGA) agencies have played a role in shaping the trajectory of financial reporting for sustainability, with a particular emphasis on triple bottom line (TBL). This exploration extends to other indexes reporting sustainability data encompassed within financial, social and environmental reporting.

This study adopts an illustrative methodology, utilizing data sourced from governmental, business and international organizational documents.

Sustainability accounting predominantly finds its place within the framework of TBL. However, it is crucial to note that sustainability reporting remains voluntary rather than mandatory. Nevertheless, accounting firms and professional accounting societies have embraced it as a supplementary facet of financial accounting reporting.

The research highlights the historical evolution of sustainability within the USFGA and corporate entities. Corporations’ interest in accounting for sustainability performances has significantly contributed to the emergence of voluntary sustainability accounting rules, as embodied by the TBL.

Reacting to the calls in the contemporary literature to further examine the relationship between board attributes and firms’ decisions to obtain corporate social responsibility assurance (CSRA) through the use of pioneering techniques, this study aims to analyse the influence of such attributes together with the existence of a corporate social responsibility (CSR) committee on the adoption of CSRA using fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (Fs-QCA).

Fs-QCA was performed on a sample of nonfinancial European companies listed on the STOXX Europe 600 index over the period 2016–2018.

The study findings indicate that the decision to obtain a CSRA report depends on a complex combination of the influence of the CSR committee and certain board attributes, such as size, experience, independence, meeting frequency, gender and CEO separation. These attributes play essential contributing roles and, if suitably combined, stimulate the adoption of CSRA.

The study findings are important for policymakers, professionals, organisations and regulators in forming and modifying the rules and guidelines related to CSR committees and board composition.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study represents the first examination of the impact of board attributes and CSR committees on the adoption of CSRA using Fs-QCA method. It also offers a novel methodological contribution to the board-CSRA literature by combining traditional statistical (logistic regression) and Fs-QCA methods. This study emphasises the benefits of Fs-QCA as an alternative to logistic regression analysis. Through the use of these methods, the research illustrates that Fs-QCA offers more detailed and informative results when compared to those obtained through logistic regression analysis. This finding highlights the potential of Fs-QCA to enhance our understanding of complex phenomena in academic research.