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Sustainability
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Environmental Disclosure and Global Reporting
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Environmental Disclosure and Global Reporting

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 July 2022) | Viewed by 13606

Special Issue Editors

Dr. ANA Morais

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
ADVANCE/CSG, ISEG – Lisbon School of Economics & Management, 1249-078 Lisbon, Portugal
Interests: IFRS; financial reporting; non-financial reporting; audit; social and environmental accounting; SDG
Dr. Teresa Eugénio

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
CARME—Centre of Applied Research in Management and Economics, School of Technology and Management, Polytechnic of Leiria, 2411-901 Leiria, Portugal
Interests: financial accounting; social and environmental accounting; corporate social responsibility (CSR); non-financial reporting information; SDGs; sustainability education and auditing
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Rita Fuentes Henriques

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
ADVANCE/CSG, ISEG – Lisbon School of Economics and Management, 1249-078 Lisbon, Portugal
Interests: financial reporting; sustainability reporting; SDGs; corporate social responsibility and financial performance; sustainability balanced scorecard

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

There is an increasing and urgent claim to improve the global consistency and comparability in environmental, social and governance (ESG) reporting. Beyond traditional financial reports, ESG disclosures propose to report triple bottom line activities of a business and balance the interests of multiple stakeholders. Different organizations have been working on some proposals to guide companies in this task, such as GRI, IIRC, IASB, SAAB, CPA and many others. These diverse frameworks have been acclaimed as generally accepted and widely used to guide the content of ESG reporting and to define key accountability principles, among which materiality has been the most significant. However, critics tend to undermine ESG reporting’s transparency, arguing that it represents an organizational tool to influence stakeholders’ perceptions and does not reflect the sustainability strategy and practice. Therefore, there is still an open debate about the best way to improve the quality of the non-financial reporting.

The purpose of this Special Issue is to promote research about the ESG disclosure and the need for a global set of sustainability reporting standards. We welcome critical, conceptual and empirical papers that explore the following topics: 

  • The needs of stakeholders in terms of ESG disclosures.
  • The need for a global set of internationally recognised ESG reporting standards.
  • The need for voluntary or mandatory sustainability reporting standards.
  • The benefits, challenges and potential consequences of having a common set of ESG reporting standards.
  • The challenges for audit and assurance of ESG information in a mandatory or voluntary context.
  • How the ESG information should be disclosed: the role of integrated reports, sustainability reports and annual reports.
  • Under a mandatory context of EGS information, who should issue the mandatory ESG reporting standards (governance and funding of the board)?
  • The need to define a materiality threshold for the ESG information. How to apply and how the two perspectives of materiality can interact: the impact materiality (topics that are material in terms of impacts on the reporting) and financial materiality (topics that are financially material for the reporting).
  • How can a set of internationally recognised ESG reporting standards impact on the convergence in ESG ratings? 
  • A possible reporting model should be similar to all companies? Or variables such as sector, size, culture, political aspects, strategic goals, business model should be considered? Additionally, developed versus developing countries?
  • Developing trends on the link between ESG disclosures and the companies’ profitability and market value.
  • How can a common set of ESG standards change the link between ESG disclosures and reputation, legitimation and visibility?
  • Stakeholders’ engagement processes and the application of the materiality principle.

Dr. Ana Morais
Dr. Teresa Eugénio
Dr. Rita Fuentes Henriques
Guest Editors

 

Keywords

  • Environmental, social and governance disclosures
  • Audit and assurance
  • Integrated report
  • Sustainability report
  • Mandatory disclosure
  • Voluntary disclosure
  • Global reporting
  • Stakeholder engagement
  • Materiality principle
  • Sustainability standards.

Published Papers (4 papers)

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Research

14 pages, 296 KiB  
Article
Sustainability Reporting Quality and Stakeholder Engagement Assessment: The Case of the Paper Sector at the Iberian Level
by Rita Henriques, Cristina Gaio and Marisa Costa
Sustainability 2022, 14(21), 14404; https://doi.org/10.3390/su142114404 - 3 Nov 2022
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 2662
Abstract
Materiality assessment identifies the main issues to be disclosed in non-financial reports to respond to the concerns of stakeholders, thus improving the quality of those reports. The purpose of this research is to understand whether there is a relationship between the quality of [...] Read more.
Materiality assessment identifies the main issues to be disclosed in non-financial reports to respond to the concerns of stakeholders, thus improving the quality of those reports. The purpose of this research is to understand whether there is a relationship between the quality of non-financial reports and the application of standards such as the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) and the International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC), as well as between the impact of stakeholder engagement and the adoption of the materiality principle. To do so, manual content analysis was performed on companies from the paper industry in the Iberian Peninsula that published non-financial reports in accordance with the GRI and/or IIRC standards during the period between 2015 and 2020. The sample consists of 133 company-year observations, and data were collected through content analysis of the reports. The results show that companies that more scrupulously follow the GRI and/or IIRC standards and those that pay more attention to the relationship with their stakeholders show higher levels of materiality, meaning higher quality of reports. In addition, it is also noticeable that, over the years, the concern with these disclosures has increased, reflecting an increase in attention given to materiality. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Environmental Disclosure and Global Reporting)
15 pages, 466 KiB  
Article
Non-Financial Reporting and Assurance: A New Opportunity for Auditors? Evidence from Portugal
by Teresa Eugénio, Sónia Gomes, Manuel Castelo Branco and Ana Isabel Morais
Sustainability 2022, 14(20), 13469; https://doi.org/10.3390/su142013469 - 19 Oct 2022
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 3021
Abstract
Research on auditing professionals’ perceptions of non-financial reporting and its assurance is relatively scarce, and the majority of the existing studies pay little attention to the assurance aspect. Our study contributes to strengthening this type of research by investigating Portuguese audit professionals’ perceptions [...] Read more.
Research on auditing professionals’ perceptions of non-financial reporting and its assurance is relatively scarce, and the majority of the existing studies pay little attention to the assurance aspect. Our study contributes to strengthening this type of research by investigating Portuguese audit professionals’ perceptions of non-financial reporting and its assurance. The purpose of the current paper is to identify the perceptions of Portuguese audit professionals about non-financial reporting, particularly the responsibility for its preparation, its mandatory or voluntary natures, and how to improve non-financial reporting and its assurance. We also analyze whether these perceptions are associated with sex and work experience. The perceptions of statutory auditors were surveyed by using a questionnaire. Results allow us to conclude that Portuguese statutory auditors agree that non-financial reporting assurance is an important practice, and that company management should be responsible for the preparation and publication of non-financial reports. They consider that assurance of these reports should be conducted by a statutory auditor and think that the Institute of Portuguese Statutory Auditors should have a more active role in this matter. Notwithstanding, very few of the respondents have experience with this type of assurance, which may explain their acknowledgment of the importance of additional training. Work experience and sex do not influence the perceptions of the auditors. Findings suggest the existence of a positive attitude towards non-financial reporting and its assurance associated with the acknowledgement of its underdevelopment in Portugal. As far as we are aware, our study is the first to focus exclusively on Portuguese auditing professionals’ perceptions concerning non-financial reporting and assurance. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Environmental Disclosure and Global Reporting)
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18 pages, 597 KiB  
Article
Public Pressure, Environmental Policy Uncertainty, and Enterprises’ Environmental Information Disclosure
by Die Wu and Hafeezullah Memon
Sustainability 2022, 14(12), 6948; https://doi.org/10.3390/su14126948 - 7 Jun 2022
Cited by 23 | Viewed by 4002
Abstract
Under the Chinese strategy of “carbon peaking and carbon neutrality”, Enterprises’ Environmental Information Disclosure (EEID), as one of the important ways for enterprises to achieve low-carbon development, has gained increased attention from the government, media, investors, and other stakeholders. the EEID is not [...] Read more.
Under the Chinese strategy of “carbon peaking and carbon neutrality”, Enterprises’ Environmental Information Disclosure (EEID), as one of the important ways for enterprises to achieve low-carbon development, has gained increased attention from the government, media, investors, and other stakeholders. the EEID is not only an important tool for companies to communicate environmental performance to the outside world, but also an effective way for the government to monitor corporate pollution behavior. Its importance is self-evident. However, relevant research shows that 70% of Chinese listed companies had not implemented the EEID in 2020. Also, there are common problems in the disclosure content and the polarization of the disclosure level among the companies that do disclose. These problems weaken the objectivity and practicability of the EEID and have a negative impact on the government’s environmental supervision, the environmental protection demands of the public, and investors’ decision making. This paper takes listed companies in China’s A-share heavily polluting industries as the research sample to solve the optimization problem of the EEID. By adopting a fixed effects model (FEM), this paper empirically studies the impact of three public pressures on the EEID: government environmental regulation, media attention, and institutional investment preference. Based on China’s unique socialist market economic system, this paper innovatively uses environmental policy uncertainty as a moderator variable. This paper examines the limitations of theoretical research on public pressure and environmental information disclosure by studying the impact of local environmental leadership change on the relationship between public pressure and the EEID. The conclusions of this paper reveal the driving mechanism of how stakeholders such as government, media, and institutional investors influence the EEID. At the same time, it expands the application of public pressure theory in environmental information disclosure research by introducing the perspective of environmental policy uncertainty. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Environmental Disclosure and Global Reporting)
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22 pages, 355 KiB  
Article
The Views of Stakeholders on Mandatory or Voluntary Use of a Simplified Standard on Non-Financial Information for SMEs in the European Union
by Paula Gomes dos Santos, Fábio Albuquerque, Maria Albertina Barreiro Rodrigues and Ana Isabel Morais
Sustainability 2022, 14(5), 2816; https://doi.org/10.3390/su14052816 - 28 Feb 2022
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 2960
Abstract
This paper investigates the variables that may explain the views of stakeholders regarding the need for a simplified non-financial reporting (NFR) standard for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the European Union (EU) and whether this standard should be mandatory or voluntary. This [...] Read more.
This paper investigates the variables that may explain the views of stakeholders regarding the need for a simplified non-financial reporting (NFR) standard for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the European Union (EU) and whether this standard should be mandatory or voluntary. This paper uses, as a source, 588 answers provided by different groups of stakeholders within the process of public consultation conducted by the EU, from February to June 2020, concerning possible revisions to the provisions of the Directive on NFR. The findings showed that the most consensual attribute that probably explains the views of stakeholders on this matter is the importance attributed by them to the concepts of comparability, reliability, and relevance. From the stakeholders’ perspective, this topic may also be explained by the users’ needs. Notwithstanding, its importance may differ, depending on the type of user. These findings are relevant within the process of developing an NFR model applicable to SMEs based on a mandatory standard, providing evidence that regulators and standard-setters should consider the qualitative characteristics of non-financial information as well as the needs of various stakeholders within this process. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Environmental Disclosure and Global Reporting)
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