Aware of the information needs of stakeholders, and of the important deficiencies often present in corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports on economic, social, and environmental issues, companies leading in sustainability have initiated a new communication strategy in which their CSR reports take into account both the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) guidelines and the International Finance Corporation (IFC) Performance Standards, in an approach termed the GRI-IFC disclosure strategy.We examine whether this innovative practice provides a better reflection of a firm's social and environmental dimensions and therefore improves the forecasts made by financial analysts, who are significant stakeholders in this respect. Our analysis of an unbalanced sample of 750 international companies, located in 19 countries and operating in 22 business sectors during the years 2011-2016, in which a logistic regression is applied to the panel data, reveals the existence of a two-way relationship between the adoption of the GRI-IFC disclosure strategy and the level of analyst coverage. Moreover, the use of this strategy, and the resulting increase in coverage, has a positive impact on the accuracy of analysts' forecasts.

The backbone of the European innovation strategy is knowledge transfer from universities to companies, the programmes supporting the creation of university spin-offs being one of its pillars. In order to achieve a better understanding of this kind of entrepreneurial activity in Spain, this article analyses the relationship between research activity and the creation of spin-offs and identifies the factors which can be linked to the level of technology used by these companies. Consulting the websites of Spanish universities and their respective Technology Transfer Offices (TTO) led to the identification of 499 spin-offs. We analysed two groups of universities, correlating their number and technological nature with the research potential of the parent university, the general economic situation and the assistance received in creating this type of company. We found a positive relation between the creation of university spin-offs and the average number of projects achieved by the university. In addition, their technological nature is positively related to the number of patents awarded to the university. This article focuses on Spain. However, the aspects addressed are common to other countries and its results may therefore be of interest to universities and policy makers wishing to promote the commercialisation of research outcomes.