A Comparative Study of Sustainability Disclosure Practices of India and USA

Abstract

Sustainable development efforts presented on a piece of paper take the shape of a sustainability report, also labelled as sustainable development report. Sustainability report integrates economic, environmental and social performance of the company into one report. This study compares the sustainable development efforts by companies in developed (USA) and developing (India) nations. The recent sustainability reports from a three-year period that is 2008–2011 of AMEX major market index (USA) and SENSEX companies (India) are studied using content analysis. Independent sample t test and ANOVA have been used to compare the reports of the said countries. The results of the analysis show that companies are now more aware of sustainable development. Out of 20 AMEX major market index companies, 14 companies are providing sustainability information in a separate sustainability report while in case of SENSEX there are 16 companies out of 30 that are producing sustainability reports. In USA greater percentage of companies is disclosing sustainability information, while the quantity of information disclosed as per GRI’s G3 guidelines, in sustainability reports is more in the case of Indian companies.

Extent of sustainability disclosure by Australian public universities: Inclusive analysis of key reporting media

“…Scoring in content analysis has been widely used in sustainability reporting studies (Bhatia & Chander, 2014;Bhatia & Tuli, 2014;Boiral & Henri, 2015;Campopiano & De Massis, 2015;Legendre & Coderre, 2013;Lipunga, 2015;Tuli, 2013). Sustainability data of each university's annual and stand-alone sustainability reports, and websites, based on the 108 GASU indicators, were analysed and scored against three different dimensions of evidence, timeframe, and specificity, following the scheme applied by Djajadikerta and Trireksani (2012).…”

“…Numerous studies have examined the state of sustainability reporting practices across various sectors in different countries (e.g. Alcaraz-Quiles et al, 2015;Crespy & Miller, 2011;De Grosbois, 2012;Farneti & Siboni, 2011;Fernando et al, 2015;Fonseca et al, 2011;Ong & Djajadikerta, 2018;Ong et al, 2016;Otheman et al, 2017;Sassen & Azizi, 2018;Tuli, 2013;Zorio-Grima et al, 2018;Zhang et al, 2019). However, the number of studies on the public sector and higher education institutions is little compared with those studies focusing on for-profit organisations (García-Sánchez, Frías-Aceituno, et al, 2013;Hahn & Kuhnen, 2013).…”

A Reference Model of Sustainability Disclosure based on four Sustainability Stock Indexes

“…Most of the big companies are providing sustainability information which provides the base for responsible investors to take wise decisions, to invest in socially and environmentally concerned companies (Tuli, 2013). This is called Responsible Investment RI.…”