CSR Performance and the Readability of CSR Reports: Too Good to be True?

Wang, Zhihong; Hsieh, Tien‐Shih; Sarkis, Joseph

doi:10.1002/csr.1440

Cited by 242 publications

(286 citation statements)

References 62 publications

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“…In the other CSR ranking models (Green ranking, RepTrak and Global 100), economic variables do not intervene but only sustainability ones, which is expected. Although these CSR rankings are open access, our results coincide with other works obtained for private‐access CSR (Wang et al, ), which confirms a positive and significant relation between CSR performance and transparency reports. We conclude that economic and CSR variables impact brand rankings (except Brand Finance), whereas only CSR variables impact CSR rankings (except Finance Yahoo Sustainability).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 91%

The impact of corporate social responsibility transparency on the financial performance, brand value, and sustainability level of IT companies

González

Poza

Olmeda

2019

Corp Soc Responsibility Env

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The companies are aware of the impact that disseminating their corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance has on how shareholders or investors perceive them. This work analyses if disseminating CSR results affects their economic–financial results, their scores in open‐access sustainability ranking, their brand values, and also the credit ratings that agencies S&P and Moody's confer them. For this purpose, the only 13 companies of the IT sector occupying a top 100 brand rankings position were selected. The results reveal that large companies come over as being more transparent in terms of sustainability, but this transparency is not related to their financial behaviour. Brand rankings collect socio‐economic and environmental information, but only the transparency in social and environmental aspects explains the public‐access CRS rankings. Finally, the results also show that this transparency affects credit ratings.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 91%

The impact of corporate social responsibility transparency on the financial performance, brand value, and sustainability level of IT companies

González

Poza

Olmeda

2019

Corp Soc Responsibility Env

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“…() and Wang et al . () both document a positive relationship between CSR performance and readability, suggesting that better CSR performers are likely to have CSR reports with better readability. Both studies employ the Flesch‐Kincaid grade level as one of their measures of readability.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 81%

A Textual Analysis of US Corporate Social Responsibility Reports

Clarkson

Ponn²,

Richardson

et al. 2020

Abacus

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We employ computer‐based textual analysis to examine disclosure patterns for a sample of US corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports from the period 2002–2016. Starting from 466 features commonly used in computational linguistics, our results show that the linguistics or disclosure patterns in CSR reports can be used to accurately predict the actual CSR performance type of CSR reporters. Specifically, we find that the two most commonly used disclosure characteristics, number of words and number of sentences, alone can be used to predict reporting firms’ CSR performance type with 81% accuracy. The accuracy of prediction increases to 96% when the top 50 linguistics features most relevant to firms’ CSR performance are included in the prediction model. In addition, we find that the linguistic features of CSR disclosure identified by our study are incrementally value relevant to investors even after controlling for the actual CSR performance score from the professional CSR rating agencies. This finding suggests that the linguistic features of CSR disclosure can be an important venue for capital market participants in evaluating firms’ CSR performance type, especially when professional CSR performance ratings are not available.

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“…Thus, in line with most of the previous research focused on environmental disclosure, our analysis is based on stakeholder theory (Kolk & Pinkse, ; Prado‐Lorenzo, Gallego‐Álvarez, & García‐Sánchez, ; Sarkis, González‐Torre, & Adenso‐Díaz, ; Husted & Allen, ; Lee, ; Perez‐Batres, Doh, Miller, & Pisani, ; Yamahaki, ; Montiel & Delgado‐Ceballos, ) and legitimacy theory (Ahmad & Mohamad, ; Gray et al, ; Llena, Moneva, & Hernández, ; Milne & Patten, ; Walden & Schwartz, ; Wang, Hsieh, & Sarkis, ).…”

Section: Theory and Hypothesesmentioning

confidence: 97%

Engagement of directors representing institutional investors on environmental disclosure

Pucheta‐Martínez

López‐Zamora

2018

Corp Soc Responsibility Env

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This paper aims to examine the role performed by representatives of institutional investors in environmental reporting in Spain, where the presence of this type of director is the highest among European countries. Additionally, we make a distinction between those representatives of institutional investors appointed by bank and insurance companies and those appointed by mutual funds, investment funds and pension funds, because they have different motivations, characteristics and incentives, and consequently their role on boards and their influence on environmental disclosure may be dissimilar, as our results suggest. Our research offers a deep analysis revealing the role played by representatives of institutional investors in Spanish listed firms' decisions to disclose environmental information. Thus, our findings show the engagement with the stakeholders of a particular type of director on boards regarding environmental disclosure.

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CSR Performance and the Readability of CSR Reports: Too Good to be True?

Cited by 242 publications

References 62 publications

The impact of corporate social responsibility transparency on the financial performance, brand value, and sustainability level of IT companies

The impact of corporate social responsibility transparency on the financial performance, brand value, and sustainability level of IT companies

A Textual Analysis of US Corporate Social Responsibility Reports

Engagement of directors representing institutional investors on environmental disclosure

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