Explanatory Factors of Integrated Sustainability and Financial Reporting

Abstract

The complexity of the business world has led to growing demands being made of companies regarding the information provided on their financial performance, corporate governance and contribution to developing sustainability. In response, some leading companies have begun to publish integrated reporting, in the form of a document providing a coherent summary of this information, thus facilitating stakeholder engagement.This paper examines the validity of the hypotheses of the theories of agency and of signalling, and analyses the political costs and those borne by owners in voluntarily developing this new type of business document. More specifically, in order to determine their prevalence among the suggested reasons for these paradigms, we analyse the effect of industry concentration, together with other factors, in the development of integrated reporting.The analysis of a non-balanced sample of 1590 international companies for the years 2008-2010, in which a logistic regression methodology is applied to panel data, reveals the negative impact of industry concentration on the development of a more pluralist report, simultaneously taking into account stakeholders, sustainability and the long-term viewpoint, as well as questions of responsible investment, business ethics and transparency. Copyright

Integrated Reporting and Assurance of Sustainability Information: An Experimental Study on Professional Investors’ Information Processing

“…From a micro-perspective, studies indicate that firm size, growth opportunities, profitability, gender diversity on the board or the assurance of non-financial reports positively correlate with the adoption of integrated reporting (Frías-Aceituno, Rodríguez-Ariza, & García-Sánchez, 2013b;Frias-Aceituno, Rodríguez-Ariza, & Garcia-Sánchez, 2014;Sierra-García, Zorio-Grima, & García-Benau, 2015). From a macro perspective, several country-level determinants, such the legal system, value system, and the intensity of market coordination have 6 been considered as potential determinants (Frías-Aceituno, Rodríguez-Ariza, & García-Sánchez, 2013a;Jensen & Berg, 2012;García-Sánchez, Rodríguez-Ariza, & Frías-Aceituno, 2013).…”

Institutional isomorphism and corporate social responsibility: towards a conceptual model

“…CSR is a strategy to avoid regulations (Mullerat, 2010) and costly repercussion, such as fines, lawsuits, consumer boycotts and decrease in sales (husted and Salazar, 2006). Social and environmental programs are also harnessed in order to reduce political costs, such as taxes and fees and may also help company to obtain certain benefits from the government and justify their profits (Frias-Aceituno et al, 2014 or by social expectations and its CSR activities are limited to ad hoc programs aimed at keeping the civil pressure down and often accompanied by company's hypocrisy (Fleming and Jones, 2013). According to the proposed conceptual model presented in Table 2 charitable CSR is linked to coercive and normative isomorphism.…”

RELATÓRIO DE SUSTENTABILIDADE OU RELATO INTEGRADO DAS EMPRESAS LISTADAS NA BM&FBOVESPA: FATORES DETERMINANTES DE DIVULGAÇÃO

“…As empresas maiores, segundo Frias-Aceituno et al (2012), utilizam de forma mais ampla os mercados de capitais para obterem financiamento do que empresas de porte menor. Isso implica diretamente na quantidade e qualidade da informação divulgada, já que elas sinalizam a situação da empresa para o mercado.…”