Corporate climate change reporting: Evidence from Bangladesh

Abstract

Research Question: Do the Bangladeshi business entities concern about the extreme climate change vulnerability of the country? How do they deal with the climate change issues in their corporate reporting? Motivation: As per the Climate Change Vulnerability Index 2014, Bangladesh is one of the most vulnerable countries in the world. To cope up this extreme stage not only the government but also all the stakeholders of the country should come forward. This study aims at exploring the attention of business organizations of Bangladesh toward the climate change issues of the country. Idea: When developed nations realized and shared accountability in relation to the adverse effect of climate change, developing nation pay less attention towards the impact of climate change and environmental degradation (Luo et al., 2013; Amran et al., 2014; Jeswani, 2007). Ironically, academic have paid less attention to examine the organizational efforts towards sustainability and environmental safety in the context of developing countries (Kabir & Akinusi, 2012). This research is intended to explore climate change reporting practices in developing countries-Bangladesh. Data: A purposive sampling of 82 companies listed in the Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE) has been taken based on the year 2016 or 2015-2016. Tools: An un-weighted Climate Change Disclosure Index (CCDI) has been constructed and used to understand the climate change disclosure level practiced by selected companies. Findings: we have found a very poor disclosure levels practiced

Determinants of corporate voluntary disclosure in a transition economy

“…It is found that the mean VD_SCORE is around 29 with a standard deviation of 12, which is far better from the previous studies (Belal, 2001;Rouf & Akhtaruddin, 2018). This result proves that Bangladeshi listed companies are more concerned about their voluntary disclosure in recent days, which is also postulated by Masum et al (2019). The findings of the study also represent the poor market history of the transition economy -Bangladesh.…”

“…Corporate voluntary disclosure is value relevant for the transition economy due to various reasons: firstly, voluntary disclosure reduces the information asymmetry towards the prospective investors -both local and foreign (Jensen & Meckling, 1976;Meek, Roberts, & Gray, 1995;Sahasranamam et al, 2019;Sarhan & Ntim, 2019) and having large volume of information induces the investors in the transition economy; secondly, voluntary disclosure reduces the cost of capital (Botosan & Harris, 2000;Dhaliwal et al, 2011) and reducing the cost of capital will ensure more capital employment in the transition economy; thirdly, voluntary disclosure enhances the transparency of the corporate reporting (Cheng & Courtenay, 2006) and transparency in corporate reporting will ensure the reliability of the corporate disclosure. Thus, investors become highly motivated; fourthly, voluntary disclosure encourages the management discretion in deciding the nature of the information to disclose (Rouf & Akhtaruddin, 2018), and more discretion towards managers will bring enthusiasm to them for working wholeheartedly on behalf of the business; finally, corporate voluntary disclosure enhances the reputation and brand name of the business entity (Masum et al, 2019) and reputed organization can certainly perform well in the transition economy. (Wallace & Naser, 1995).…”

Effects of Corporate Governance Mechanisms on Climate Change Disclosures: Evidence from Listed Banks in an Emerging Economy

“…The degree of climate change disclosures is the dependent variable of the study. Following the studies of Masuma et al (2019) and Dey et al (2017), we developed a climate change disclosure index (CCDI) that measured the degree of climate change disclosure of the sample banks. A non-weighted binary index was developed to examine the narrative sections of the annual green banking report, corporate social responsibility report, sustainability report, directors’ report and chairman or director’s statement of each bank.…”

“…We selected 35 items to develop a score of CCDI for the sample banks. Consistent with the studies of Nurunnabi (2016), Kılıç and Kuzey (2019) and Masuma et al (2019), the CCDI score was derived by dividing the climate change disclosure items disclosed by the maximum number of items that a bank might disclose. The CCDI score was calculated as: …”

“…Belal et al (2010) examined the nature of and revealed the extent of corporate environmental and climate change disclosures in Bangladesh for the year 2008. Similarly, Masuma et al (2019) showed disclosure levels practiced by the Bangladeshi-listed 82 companies for the year 2016. These studies performed univariate analysis to determine the level of climate change disclosures.…”