Search results

This study aims to examine whether and how gender diversity on corporate boards is associated with voluntary nonfinancial disclosures, particularly water disclosures.

This study uses corporate water information disclosure data from Chinese listed firms between 2010 and 2018 to conduct regression analyses to examine the association between female directors and water information disclosure.

Empirical results show that female directors have a significantly positive association with corporate water information disclosure. Additionally, internal industry water sensitivity of firms moderates this significant relationship.

This study determined that female directors can promote not only water disclosure but also positive corporate water performance, reflecting the consistency of words and deeds of female directors in voluntary nonfinancial disclosures.

This paper investigates the relationship between product market competition and firms’ water information disclosure and how firms’ ownership type can affect this relationship in China, offering new insights into corporate water management.

The authors investigated 303 Chinese listed companies in highly water-sensitive industries to examine how product market competition influences corporate water information disclosure by subdividing the product market competition into market competition at the firm level and the industry competition intensity at the industry level.

The results show that there exists an inverted U-shaped relationship between industry competition and water information disclosure; enterprises with the highest market power in a mildly competitive industry are more willing to voluntarily disclose water information and play an industry benchmarking role. Further tests demonstrate that the relationship between industry competition intensity and water information disclosure is stronger for state-owned enterprises than for private enterprises.

The current water resources regulations in China are relatively lax and the water risk awareness of firms is weak, which may affect the applicability of the results. In addition, water information disclosure research is a relatively new field and a quantitative index system for water information disclosure is still in the exploratory stage. Further developments, including the selection, definition and measuring methods of a water index are required.

The authors developed a new direction of enterprise water management activities from the perspective of market competition. Based on the market conditions in China, the authors also investigated the impact of the ownership type of the enterprises on the relationship between market competition and water information disclosure.

The authors suggested that the government should improve laws and regulations and adopt incentive mechanisms to encourage enterprises to implement water resource management. In addition, the government should encourage high market status enterprises to actively fulfill their environmental responsibilities so that the entire industry is encouraged to follow suit.

This study represents an important development in the field of environmental accounting and is the first research on corporate water information disclosure; it also extends the research on the influence mechanisms of market competition on the environmental management practices of enterprises.

This paper aims to use stakeholder theory and the guanxi perspective to examine the determining factors of water resources information disclosure among Chinese enterprises in the context of authoritarian and normative pressures.

Content analysis is first applied to analyze the environmental sustainability reports of the sample enterprises from 2010 to 2017. Afterward, logistic regression analysis is used to analyze the coded data and examine the proposed hypotheses.

The empirical evidence shows that having the state as the largest shareholder is positively, but not significantly, related to disclosure of water resources information. Water-sensitive industries are positively and significantly related to the disclosure of water resources information. Guanxi is negatively related to disclosure of water resources information, but not to the level of significance. The effect of the interaction term (Guanxi × Large) on disclosure is negative and also significant.

It is necessary for enterprises to build environmental awareness, increase information transparency for better communication with stakeholders and also establish accountability mechanisms. For effective disclosure and higher information transparency, the Chinese Government should take measures to avoid the disruption of guanxi and ensure effective enforcement of laws.

Industrial organizations or supervisory institutions are advised to encourage firms to build awareness of water-related risks and environmental sustainability and to improve how they disclose water resources information to stakeholders.

This study offers evidence of the determining factors of water resources information disclosure, a topic that has been rarely studied before. The evidence sheds light on how firms, especially those in China, have dealt with disclosure of water resources information in the context of authoritarian and normative pressures.

This paper aims to respond to increasing interest in the intersection between accounting and human rights and to explore whether access to information might itself constitute a human right. As human rights have “moral force”, establishing access to information as a human right may act as a catalyst for policy change. The paper also aims to focus on environmental information, and specifically the case of corporate water‐related disclosures.

This paper follows Griffin and Sen, who suggest that a candidate human right might be recognised when it is consistent with “founding” human rights, it is important and it may be influenced by societal action. The specific case for access to corporate water‐related information to constitute a human right is evaluated against these principles.

Access to corporate water‐related disclosures may indeed constitute a human right. Political participation is a founding human right, water is a critical subject of political debate, water‐related information is required in order for political participation and the state is in a position to facilitate provision of such information. Corporate water disclosures may not necessarily be in the form of annual sustainability reports, however, but may include reporting by government agencies via public databases and product labelling. A countervailing corporate right to privacy is considered and found to be relevant but not necessarily incompatible with heightened disclosure obligations.

This paper seeks to make both a theoretical and a practical contribution. Theoretically, the paper explores how reporting might be conceived from a rights‐based perspective and provides a method for determining which disclosures might constitute a human right. Practically, the paper may assist those calling for improved disclosure regulation by showing how such calls might be embedded within human rights discourse.

This research aims to understand how companies communicate their understanding of water-related challenges and their responses to identify new pathways for addressing this challenge to further advance rising interest in water sustainability strategies of corporations.

Through a content analysis of corporate disclosures, this paper identifies the actions and challenges reported by 35 FTSE 100 companies. These are analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively to explore variations in the subject of disclosure and the narrative framing.

The findings identify a clear split across the types of water sustainability reporting according to the industrial sector and subject of disclosure, linking to different narratives used according to legitimacy pressures.

This paper finds that energy, materials and consumer staples sectors consistently outperform other sectors on the reporting of water issues and the scope which is covered. This has implications for the design of regulations and incentives to increase water sustainability management activities in large companies, which currently under-report.

This paper highlights the need for policy implementation to further integrate water-related topics into company reporting and identifies situations where the narrative disclosed may distort the underlying situation that is being communicated.

This paper explores the narratives used in company reporting to identify the challenges related to water sustainability and the actions taken in response. This can contribute to developing a pathway towards increased water sustainability (e.g. through new policy design).

The purpose of this paper is to investigate an initial set of formative indicators to measure the level of efforts on sustainable use of water by companies from different sectors to eventually generate an index with a ranking of such companies.

The authors started with unstructured data from an open-ended survey conducted by the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) on over 300 global companies. Using data from 158 of the companies in that survey from 27 different two-digit UK SIC codes, the authors devised the indicators, translated these into questions requiring response on a seven-point Likert scale, and then coded the companies’ response in the CDP survey for the questionnaire.

First, all the questions were valid in that responses could be provided. Second, in open-ended surveys like CDP's survey, companies provided information only on selected dimensions and not on others. Third, across sectors, companies are putting more effort on usage efficiency relative to where the water comes from or where it goes after use.

The questions still require field-testing for validation and user acceptance.

The proposed questions could become part of a survey for companies to self-assess or to disclose information on the sustainable use of water. An index created using disclosed data would motivate companies to make more effort towards sustainable use of water.

The authors believe this to be the first effort towards formulating a sustainability index of companies’ use of water.

Water is critical to all life on Earth and a crucial business resource which evidence suggests is often mismanaged. Corporate water accounting is an emerging practice designed to help corporations address water issues. Indirect water management in supply chains is important, but hitherto little consideration has been given to supply chain water accounting. This paper aims to synthesise available literature and infer how future research can further knowledge and take-up in practice.

An integrative literature review is used to synthesise the current state of knowledge and the prospects for academic research looking to further practice in supply chain water accounting.

Literature reveals two contrasting issues in need of further research, first, between normative and practical approaches to supply chain water accounting and, second, the focus on external reporting versus management.

One main limitation is recognised. Technical aspects of supply chain water accounting tools, for example, water footprints and material flow cost accounting are not considered as focus is on the take-up of corporate supply chain water accounting in practice.

This study sets out an agenda for the future of supply chain water accounting which can be used to guide research and stimulate extension in practice and take-up of important indirect considerations in corporate water accounting in supply chains.

The integrative literature review leads to the identification of future research opportunities and a set of research questions relating to useful information, links with internal decision-making and external collaboration, application in companies of different sizes and to furthering the take-up of corporate water accounting practice in the increasingly important collaborative supply chain relationships which span the globe.

This paper aims to explore the potential for the labelling of the water footprint of products in an Australian context. It considers theoretical contribution and technical challenges of water labelling and in particular how non-fungible water extractions might be evaluated and communicated.

The paper examines the theoretical contribution of labels drawing on the sustainability typology articulated by Hopwood et al. and more recent claims that access to product-level environmental information may constitute a consumer right. The paper also explores labelling empirically via an extensive literature review and ten interviews with water regulators and commercial water users.

Water footprint reporting could make a significant contribution to public water literacy. Significant technical hurdles remain, however, in appropriately distinguishing differing impacts of water extractions as well as in relation to measurement, allocation and information overload. This suggests that labelling of complex products is currently infeasible but existing and emerging solutions to these issues suggest that labelling of simpler products is a realistic possibility.

Given the relatively small scope of interviews, the findings of this study might be triangulated with other research methods such as surveys and/or focus groups for the findings to be validated. Additionally, future research might focus on overcoming each of the challenges noted above for a particular product in order to bring water labelling closer to practical reality.

Labelling schemes offer improved corporate supply-chain accountability yet have received little attention in the social and environmental accounting literature to date. This paper therefore seeks to make a theoretical and empirical contribution to this emerging field of labelling in the area of water, a key sustainability issue.

Water management is an emerging practice. This paper aims to propose a theoretical model of a corporate water management system (WMS) and empirically explores whether superior water management improves water use performance.

Our model of WMS consists of 10 structural elements. We draw on self-discipline theory to predict the results and use archival data from the Carbon Disclosure Project to measure and evaluate the overall quality and effectiveness of the water management of our sample companies.

Companies motivated to adopt self-discipline tend to proactively implement high-quality WMSs. However, further analyses suggest that water management without regulatory sanctions appears insufficient for reducing water usage, at least in the short term. Overall, this study reveals a clear and growing tendency for businesses to manage water risks and a corresponding momentum toward more rigid control of water consumption.

Corporate participation in the Carbon Disclosure Project survey is voluntary. Thus, the data in this paper are subject to self-selection bias, and what the companies claim concerning their behavior may not reflect the reality of their business practices. In addition, the inferences drawn here are based on data from only large firms. Future researchers could investigate whether and how corporate WMS continued to develop or decline in recent years, and how such practices integrate with other aspects of management (including carbon and energy).

This paper responds to water scarcity by exploring how the development of corporate WMS is driven by self-discipline motivation. This study sets out an agenda for the future of water accounting and management which can be used to guide research and stimulate extension in practice. Governments and non-governmental organizations may utilize the results to guide and bind corporations to achieve sustainability.

The efficient use of freshwater is essential for sustainability, but limited studies have addressed the issue. The current paper explores this important issue, and our findings suggest regulatory institution is necessary to effectively enhance water usage.

This paper represents an early attempt to model corporate water management practices. A WMS should facilitate resilience in water management, measurement of water performance, and comparability among firms. This study contributes to the conceptualization and empirical assessment of self-discipline in motivated water management and enhances the validity and applicability of the theory of self-disciplining in sustainability research.

This paper aims to reflect on the special issue that has collected studies by the research community in China pertinent to the country’s recent developments in sustainability accounting, management and policy, as well as to suggest possible future avenues of studies.

This paper articulates the current status of researching sustainability accounting, management and policy in China that is instigated by the country’s regulatory initiatives under its political economy. It highlights the papers accepted for the special issue, their areas of focus and the underlying characteristics.

It points out that the accepted research papers concentrate on issues related to corporate social responsibility disclosures, sustainability reporting and environmental management in China from the perspectives of the domestic stakeholders.

Future studies are likely to be increasingly interdisciplinary in nature and requires academia, policymakers and practitioners to make better collaborative efforts in researching about China’s sustainability and the efficacy of their engagement with stakeholders.

Studies on alignment between China’s further developments and UN’s sustainable development goals (SDGs) are particularly considered desirable as the country continues its globalization initiatives. Education about sustainability accounting for the working professionals and their next generation is much needed for China in support of developing a more sustainable economy aligned with UN's SDGs.

Scholars in China actively developing their research interests in this field reflect critical thinking about the country’s pursuit of sustainable development within a social-political economy that is dissimilar to the West. In the meantime, the country continues to develop into a significant stakeholder of the world’s sustainability implying expectation of transparency in sustainability performance.

With reference to the review exercise conducted for the special issue, it suggests that there are surging interests in researching accountability for sustainability across the local and international communities to facilitate much needed knowledge exchange. The country and indigenous culture of China, as well as its institutions in relation to sustainability, would require much further exploration in our world under globalization.