Purpose This paper aims to provide new insights on the determinants of social and economic sustainability reportings of multinational enterprises (MNEs) in three Anglo-Saxon countries, mainly Australia, the UK and South Africa, from the perspective of corporate governance, stakeholder and corporate legitimacy. Design/methodology/approach This paper examines stand-alone sustainability reports of 67 large MNEs from three countries available in the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) website for the period of 2008-2009. It undertakes two distinct methodological approaches: first, principal component analysis (PCA) of GRI guidelines (G3) on social and economic indicators to identify the most appropriate dependent variables, and second, hierarchical multiple regression for the hypotheses testing and finding determinants of respective dependent variables on social and economic reportings. Findings The results from the PCA of GRI guidelines (G3) provide an alternative way of categorizing the social and economic indicators when compared to the categories given by the GRI. Again, the results from hierarchical multiple regression indicate the industry sector as the dominant determinant of social and economic reportings. In particular, the positive, significant association of board independence, assurance and employee performance variables with economic reporting confirms the significant roles of corporate governance, stakeholders and corporate legitimacy in determining economic reporting. The findings also suggest the complementary nature of relevant theories in corporate voluntary disclosures relating to economic performance. However, social reporting shows no such relations, which rather relies more on firm-specific/financial variables of MNEs including firm size and age. Research limitations/implications The sample of this study is limited to two-year periods and large MNEs available in the GRI website with stand-alone sustainability reports only. Practical implications The PCA focuses on most relevant and specific categories of social and economic reportings as opposed to GRI generic categories. The PCA findings also suggest the GRI to contemplate reducing the social and economic indicators for future guidelines. The hierarchical multiple regression results highlight specific areas of emphasis that MNEs should focus on when reporting social and economic information. Originality/value This study adds value to the existing literature on GRI-based social and economic reportings as well as the complementary nature of corporate governance, stakeholders and corporate legitimacy perspectives.

Disclosure is an important communication channel that can enhance corporate transparency and accountability and improve engagement with numerous stakeholders. Corporate environmental disclosure has garnered attention globally in recent years across multiple stakeholders groups including businesses, investors, watch groups and legislative branches of governments etc. for its far-reaching social and economic implications. It has become a major challenge for business organizations to address and deal with environmental issues, in particular for multinational enterprises as part of their legitimacy and meeting stakeholders’ expectations. Again, the need for stakeholders’ response to corporate environmental reports has been reiterated in extant literature; however there remains lack of adequate response from stakeholders for the inability for corporations to identify specific environmental issues that stakeholders expect companies to disclose to assure them of corporate legitimacy. To respond to this gap, this study contributes to knowledge by highlighting specific areas of importance which companies in both developed and emerging economies can address in order to encourage report users and stakeholders to positively respond to their assured environmental reports. This study, therefore, focuses on environmental disclosure in multinational companies in both developed (Australia and United Kingdom) and emerging (South Africa) economies. Building on both legitimacy and stakeholders’ theories and Global Reporting initiative (GRI) disclosure guidelines (G3), the study applies hierarchical regression modelling to examine the influences of stakeholder, legitimacy, financial and demographic variables on the ‘preservation’, ‘responsibility’ and ‘initiatives’ aspects of environmental disclose of 67 companies operating in these three countries over a period of two years from 2008 to 2009. Empirical results indicated that return on assets and industry sector were significantly predictive of both preservation and responsibility components. Again, firm age was predictive of preservation and initiatives components, while assurance was predictive of initiatives and responsibility components. On the other hand, firm size and board structure were predictive of only the initiatives component and not the preservation and responsibility components. However, diversification, ownership, internal policy, other financial variables appear to have no influence on any environmental components. These findings have implications for companies, investors, policy makers and stakeholders at large. Environmentally sensitive companies could be encouraged to allocate more resources in order to increase their environmental activities and disclosure. From a policy perspective, the results could form part of the inputs to be considered in the future GRI guidelines. Similarly, policy makers also can take note in formulating environmental policies to address both social and economic implications.

This paper explores changes in environmental reporting among Australian MNEs between 2004 and 2007, using the GRI guidelines, and explains how GRI transformation (from G2 to G3) leads to changes in environmental disclosure aspects along with their association with company size, profitability, industry sector. Applying Wilcoxon matched pair signed ranked and Spearman rank correlation tests, twenty companies from the Australian SAM Sustainability Index (AuSSI) are examined to identify the extent of changes on specific aspects of environmental disclosure. The findings of the paper document a significant increase in environmental reporting in Australian companies. In particular, reporting has increased for energy, emissions and environmental management followed by water, overall, materials, transport and product/services aspects. However, a shift in emphasis from compliance and biodiversity aspects associated with climate changes and resource preservation is also evident. Again, the majority of changes occurred in companies operating in environmentally sensitive industries with industry sector having significant relationship with a few environmental disclosure aspects, the study shows no significant effect of company size and profitability on different environmental disclosure aspects. These evidences indicate that external forces (such as, legislation, industry sensitiveness to environment, and stakeholder awareness and pressure) rather than internal factors are more effective to influence and determine environmental disclosure in Australian companies.<br /><br /><br /><br />

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This paper examines the effect of financial stability on the economic growth of countries in Sub-Saharan Africa using the World Development Indicators Data. To select the appropriate model best fits for the data, the Hausman test was used to select Random Effect Estimator over Fixed Effect Estimator to assess the relationship between the variables. Panel data was collected on Sub-Saharan Africa countries from 2010 to 2019 to predict the effect of financial stability on economic growth. The paper revealed that financial stability accounted for 71.8% of the variation of a country's economic growth for the period other things being equal. It recommends that financial regulators within Sub-Saharan African should provide prudential policies aim at attaining higher economic growth should target both monetary and fiscal policies as well market discipline.