Sustainability Accounting, Management and Policy Journal’s contributions to corporate social responsibility disclosure research

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to review and assess Sustainability Accounting, Management and Policy Journal (SAMPJ)’s contributions to the body of sustainability disclosure research. Design/methodology/approach The authors review the 31 sustainability disclosure-themed articles published in SAMPJ up through Volume 8 (2017) and assess the strengths and weaknesses of the body of research, as well as its contributions to the understanding of the reporting phenomenon. Findings The assessment by the authors suggests SAMPJ has been very inclusive with respect to methods and topics, although we note certain areas where future research could be expanded. Research limitations/implications The authors limit the review to articles in SAMPJ, so they cannot assess the degree to which the general findings as to trends might reflect the overall body of sustainability disclosure research. Practical implications The review provides suggestions for where researchers looking to publish in SAMPJ might focus so as to enhance the overall body of knowledge. Social implications The primary social implication is that the preponderance of the evidence in the articles the authors review suggests that sustainability disclosure remains incomplete, biased and driven by concerns with legitimation. As such, it provides more evidence in support of the need for better regulation and enforcement. Originality/value While prior studies have summarized aspects of social and environmental accounting in general or with regard to specific journals, none has assessed the contributions specifically to sustainability disclosure research through this journal.

Does context matter for sustainability disclosure? Institutional factors in Southeast Asia

“…First, our study presents insights into commonalities and nuanced differences in the institutional contexts across six countries in SEA region, responding to calls for more comparative SD studies from non‐western perspectives (Arena, Liong, & Vourvachis, ; Patten & Shin, ; Tilt, ; Williams & Aguilera, ). Thus, our findings could enable an expansive understanding of SD within the SEA region, and its institutional environment, potentially opening up opportunities for more comparative cross‐national research from a multi‐region perspective.…”

“…First, our study presents insights into commonalities and nuanced differences in the institutional contexts across six countries in SEA region, responding to calls for more comparative SD studies from non-western perspectives (Arena, Liong, & Vourvachis, 2018;Patten & Shin, 2019;Tilt, 2016;Williams & Aguilera, 2008 scholars' arguments that not all institutional factors impose the same pressures upon organisational practices (Mainardes et al, 2011). It also emphasises the importance of examining the nature of institutional pressures to understand how their configurations of in different countries could shape non-market practise such as SD (Hartmann & Uhlenbruck, 2015;Jamali & Carroll, 2017).…”

“…For instance, countries in the South East Asia (SEA), a sub-region in Asia, which has diverse socioeconomic issues, ranging from poverty, climate change, to human rights violations, child labour, and corruption (Belal, Cooper, & Roberts, 2013) have proactively undertaken institutional reforms to influence corporate sustainability practices (Srinivasan, 2011). Nevertheless, as extant research examining institutional influences on corporate sustainability in non-western regions, is limited to single country studies (See Hermawan & Gunardi, 2019;Hu & Loh, 2018;Janggu, Darus, Zain, & Sawani, 2014;Zahid, Ghazali, & Rahman, 2016), we do not have a comparative cross-country level understanding of how country-level institutional influences could differ between countries within a non-western region (Fifka & Drabble, 2012;Vashchenko, 2017), and how those influences could engender corporate sustainability practices, specifically that of sustainability disclosure (SD) in that region (Patten & Shin, 2019;Tilt, 2016).…”

Do environmental responsibility views influence investors’ use of environmental performance and assurance information?

“…These views represent two commonly-held broad perspectives on CSR (Cheah et al, 2011;Moser and Martin, 2012). The study uses an experimental setting, following Patten and Shin's (2019) suggestion that such studies can more carefully ascribe causality for outcomes on factors such as investor beliefs. The study focuses on the influence of environmental performance information on investor judgments, since these disclosures comprise an important segment of CSR reporting overall (GRI, 2013;Khan, Serafeim, and Yoon, 2016;SASB, 2017).…”

Editorial

“…To mark this milestone, SAMPJ's tenth volume will include some review papers and papers by well-known authors suggesting further areas of research. Notable authors of papers in issues 1 and 2 include Gloria Agyemang, Carlos Larrinaga, Michel Magnan, Den Patten, Stefan Schaltegger and Charl de Villiers (Adhariani and de Villiers, 2019;Egan and Agymang, 2019;Luque-Vílchez et al, 2019;Patten and Shin, 2019;Sankara et al, 2019;Silva and Schaltegger, 2019;Tadros and Magnan, 2019).…”