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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.

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.

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).

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.

This study aims to examine sustainability reporting through the lens of global reporting initiative (GRI) standards in developing economies, particularly in Pakistan, from the perspective of stakeholder theory, legitimacy theory, and system theory.

Qualitative and quantitative analyses on economic, social and environmental areas of sustainability reporting based on the GRI standards are applied across 57 organizations listed on the Pakistan stock exchange over the years 2016–2020.

The results from the content analysis and descriptive statistics show that overall sustainability reporting increased persistently over time and limited organizations disclose economic, social and environmental sustainability based on GRI standards. Moreover, the result from the two-tailed correlation analysis shows positive relations between economic, social and environmental sustainability reporting.

Following the GRI standards, the regulators, government and policymakers need to assess the sustainability reporting based on GRI standards to improve corporate operations' transparency, stakeholder trust and legitimacy. The organizations should move beyond the compliance of regulatory norms and adopt the globally accepted sustainability GRI standards to improve sustainability reporting. The same kind of sustainability reporting is also advised for other countries with similar backgrounds and sustainability challenges.

The integrated sustainability reporting framework based on GRI standards enables the organizations to work as a system of interconnected economic, social and environmental sustainability to resolve the issue of sustainability reporting, ensure the trust of multiple stakeholders and legitimize their business operations in society.

To the best of the authors' knowledge and thorough review of literature, this is the first study that examines the sustainability reporting based on GRI in the developing country of Pakistan to extend the findings of previous studies from conventional sustainability reporting to the globally accepted GRI based sustainability reporting. Using system theory, this study provides an additional contribution to the consideration concerning sustainability reporting based on GRI standards in the context of Pakistan.

This paper aims to provide evidence to suggest that private social and environmental reporting (i.e. one-on-one meetings between institutional investors and investees on social and environmental issues) is beginning to merge with private financial reporting and that, as a result, integrated private reporting is emerging.

In this paper, 19 FTSE100 companies and 20 UK institutional investors were interviewed to discover trends in private integrated reporting and to gauge whether private reporting is genuinely becoming integrated. The emergence of integrated private reporting through the lens of institutional logics was interpreted. The emergence of integrated private reporting as a merging of two hitherto separate and possibly rival institutional logics was framed.

It was found that specialist socially responsible investment managers are starting to attend private financial reporting meetings, while mainstream fund managers are starting to attend private meetings on environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues. Further, senior company directors are becoming increasingly conversant with ESG issues.

The findings were interpreted as two possible scenarios: there is a genuine hybridisation occurring in the UK institutional investment such that integrated private reporting is emerging or the financial logic is absorbing and effectively neutralising the responsible investment logic.

These findings provide evidence of emergent integrated private reporting which are useful to both the corporate and institutional investment communities as they plan their engagement meetings.

No study has hitherto examined private social and environmental reporting through interview research from the perspective of emergent integrated private reporting. This is the first paper to discuss integrated reporting in the private reporting context.

The purpose of this research is to investigate the factors determining the social and environmental reporting (SER) of Indian textile and apparel (TA) firms.

The 2010 annual reports of a sample of top 100 Indian TA firms listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange were examined to assess the extent of SER. SER was assessed based on the Global Reporting Initiative index applicable to the TA industry. Multiple regression analysis was conducted to investigate the determinants of SER.

This study reports a low extent of SER in the annual reports of Indian listed TA firms, with a mean disclosure of 14 per cent. On average, firms reported more extensive environmental information, with a mean disclosure of 18.4 per cent, compared to social information, with a mean disclosure of 10.7 per cent. Most firms reported social information relating to “labour practices and decent work”, while the reporting of information relating to “human rights” was sparse. Overall, the SER patterns provide support for legitimacy theory. Consistent with legitimacy theory expectations, corporate size, brand development and audit committee size are significant factors determining the variation in SER. No significant relationship was found between board independence, level of ownership and SER.

There is no existing study specifically on SER by TA firms in India. In fact, there is surprisingly little research on SER in the Indian context in general. Given the dearth in research on corporate social reporting in the Indian context, the study extends prior literature on corporate SER by concentrating on SER of TA firms in an emerging economy. The theoretical contribution of this study is the testing of legitimacy theory in the context of an emerging economy. This study contributes towards practice by delineating the relationship between governance structure and SER, particularly with regard to issues such as child labour. These findings have implications for the future development of reporting standards and regulations in regard to corporate governance in India. The dearth of social reporting by Indian TA firms has implications for foreign purchasers of branded products, as international companies have been implicated in sub-optimal social or environmental practices or incidents.

The purpose of this paper is to report on the long-term effect of integrated reporting on the quality of information. Investors and stakeholders rely on high-quality integrated reports to obtain social, environmental and ethical information for decision-making. A striking weakness found in recent research on integrated reports is the way certain items of social, environmental and ethical information are excluded while other items are repeated. There is accordingly much confusion, clutter and fragmentation in the integrated reporting landscape.

Through a detailed content review of the information companies report on, more insight can be gained into this question five years after the mandatory implementation of King III, which requires companies to provide integrated reports. This study used a similar approach to that of Solomon and Maroun (2012), reviewing the integrated reports of four companies with high social and environmental impact, over a period of three years (2012 to 2014).

The companies’ integrated reports were reviewed in terms of social, environmental and ethical items. The results indicate that there has been a distinct decrease in the amount of information provided in integrated reports but, more importantly, there still exists significant uncertainty as to the amount of reporting that is required.

The results of this study prove that regulators may have to provide more detailed guidelines as to the reporting duties of companies. It also indicates to managers that their approach to integrated reporting may have to be revised to ensure useful information is provided to stakeholders.

The paper seeks to adopt an institutional view of legitimacy to examine how a sample of French companies reacted to the introduction of the “New Economic Regulations” in French law in 2001 requiring that publicly listed companies disclose environmental information.

The approach used in the paper is both quantitative and qualitative. A content analysis of environmental disclosure provided in annual reports, environmental reports and web sites by 26 French companies listed in the CAC 40 is performed throughout the period 2001-2011.

The findings of this study show a significant and enduring improvement in the quality and quantity of environmental disclosure from 2001 to 2011. Even in the absence of penalties for non-compliance, the NRE law stimulated a stark and positive lasting change in the way that French companies account for their environmental information. These findings are consistent with the institutional view of legitimacy theory whereby legislation provides corporate managers with a representation of relevant audiences' perceptions about social and environmental reporting, prompting them to comply with the law to ensure organizational legitimacy.

Social and environmental reporting studies generally adopt a strategic view of legitimacy to examine how organizations use social and environmental reporting to respond strategically to legitimacy threats. This study provides early empirical evidence about the relevance of institutional legitimacy theory in explaining environmental reporting.

The main purpose of this paper is to illustrate the role of accounting and accounting professionals in sustainability by conducting an in-depth literature review.

This is a review-based article that does not contain empirical research. A comprehensive literature research was conducted by using online databases of selected scientific publishers and using keywords such as accounting, accounting professionals, sustainability, sustainability reporting and sustainability accounting. In addition to that, web pages of the accounting regulatory bodies and four big audit companies were also investigated.

Based upon the literature survey, it can be said that there is a lack of defining the relationship between the sustainability concept and accounting and also potential solutions to overcome the problems which create challenges for accounting and accounting professionals.

The only limitation of the study can be explained as it being a literature survey.

It is expected that the results of the paper will appear in several applications among accounting professionals, the firm that they work in, the association of professional accountants, education institutions and all the stakeholders of accounting, especially in countries with the relatively early stage of sustainability practices. The paper may give insight into aforementioned stakeholders of accounting in reformation of accounting toward sustainability.

The main contribution of this paper is to fulfill the gap in the accounting and sustainability literature by suggesting “certified sustainability accountant” credential that is equipped with core knowledge of environmental engineering as a specialized profession to handle the technical accounting problems that are related to sustainability.