Multinationals’ Accountability on Sustainability: The Evolution of Third-party Assurance of Sustainability Reports

Perego, Paolo; Kolk, Ans

doi:10.1007/s10551-012-1420-5

Cited by 407 publications

(658 citation statements)

References 60 publications

(89 reference statements)

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“…Methodologically, focusing exclusively on MNCs for the examination of information reported on Sustainable HRM has precedent. For example, Perego and Kolk (2012) and Kolk and Perego (2010) used samples of large companies selected from the Fortune Global 250 and Perego (2009) used an international sample of companies. In addition, our sample includes a fair representation of LME and CME firms: Of the 100 LME firms in the Forbes 250, 40 are included in our analysis and of the 86 CME firms in the Forbes 250, 55 are included.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reporting on sustainability and HRM: a comparative study of sustainability reporting practices by the world's largest companies

Ehnert

Parsa

Roper

et al. 2015

The International Journal of Human Resource Management

371

279

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As a response to the growing public awareness on the importance of organisational contributions to sustainable development, there is an increased incentive for corporations to report on their sustainability activities. In parallel with this has been the development of 'Sustainable HRM' which embraces a growing body of practitioner and academic literature connecting the notions of corporate sustainability to HRM. The aim of this article is to analyse corporate sustainability reporting amongst the world's largest companies and to assess the HRM aspects of sustainability within these reports in comparison to environmental aspects of sustainable management and whether organisational attributes -principally country-of-origin -influences the reporting of such practices. A focus in this article is the extent to which the reporting of various aspects of sustainability may reflect dominant models of corporate governance in the country in which a company is headquartered. The findings suggest, first and against expectations, that the overall disclosure on HRM-related performance is not lower than that on environmental performance. Second, companies report more on their internal workforce compared to their external workforce. Finally, international differences, in particular those between companies headquartered in liberal market economies and coordinated market economies, are not as apparent as expected.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reporting on sustainability and HRM: a comparative study of sustainability reporting practices by the world's largest companies

Ehnert

Parsa

Roper

et al. 2015

The International Journal of Human Resource Management

371

279

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Moreover, compared with specialised CSR reports, annual reports tend to have a much wider readership among shareholders, stakeholders and information intermediaries, such as financial analysts and credit rating agencies. Finally, the majority of the content of annual reports tends to be audited, whereas auditing of CSR reports tends to be much more limited (Pflugrath, Roebuck and Simnett, 2011;Perego and Kolk, 2012). This suggests that the CSR information provided in annual reports has a greater reliability than that published in CSR reports.…”

Section: Measuring Csr Disclosurementioning

confidence: 99%

Corporate Governance and Corporate Social Responsibility Disclosure: Evidence from the US Banking Sector

et al. 2013

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The nal publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10551-013-1929-2.Additional information: Use policyThe full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-pro t purposes provided that:• a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.Please consult the full DRO policy for further details. interests. Contrary to our expectations, CEO duality also impacts positively on CSR disclosure. From an agency-theoretical viewpoint, this suggests that powerful CEOs may promote transparency about banks' CSR activities for their private benefits. While this could indicate that powerful CEOs are under particular pressure to appease stakeholders' concerns that they might abuse their power by providing a high degree of CSR disclosure, it could also be a sign of managerial risk aversion or managers' private reputational concerns.

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“…However, the effectiveness and impact of the external assurance process for sustainability reports has not been clearly demonstrated and has been robustly criticized in the literature (e.g., Perego and Kolk 2012;Boiral 2013;Dando and Swift 2003;O'Dwyer and Owen 2005). For example, in their longitudinal study of third party assurance of sustainability reports, Perego and Kolk (2012) found that many multinationals ''project a decoupled or symbolic image of accountability through assurance, thereby undermining the credibility of these verification practices' ' (p. 173). From this perspective, the impact of third party assurance on the reliability of sustainability reports seems at best uncertain.…”

Section: Limitations and Avenues For Future Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Managing Biodiversity Through Stakeholder Involvement: Why, Who, and for What Initiatives?

Boiral¹,

2015

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The increasing pressures to conserve biodiversity-particularly for industries based on the exploitation of natural resources-have reinforced the need to implement specific measures in this area. Corporate commitment to preserving biodiversity is increasingly scrutinized by stakeholders and now represents an important aspect of business ethics. Although stakeholder involvement is often essential to the management of biodiversity, very few studies in the literature have focused on the details of this involvement. The objective of this paper is to analyze how mining and forestry companies can manage biodiversity issues through stakeholder involvement based on a content analysis of 430 sustainability reports using the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) framework. The paper elucidates the reasons for such involvement, the nature of stakeholders involved, and the types of measures employed to manage biodiversity. Stakeholders' motives for becoming involved revolve around four main issues: complexity and knowledge management; self-regulation and relationships with public authorities; legitimacy and social responsiveness; and commercial and strategic objectives. The stakeholders involved in biodiversity initiatives are essentially non-governmental organizations, experts and universities, public authorities, and coalitions of companies. In the end, the initiatives identified can be grouped into three categories: management practices, socio-political actions, and research and conservation measures. The paper provides various examples of these initiatives and shows how they can be implemented in collaboration with different stakeholders depending on the company's objectives. The contributions the study makes to the literature on biodiversity management and the managerial implications of the study are analyzed in the discussion section.

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Multinationals’ Accountability on Sustainability: The Evolution of Third-party Assurance of Sustainability Reports

Cited by 407 publications

References 60 publications

Reporting on sustainability and HRM: a comparative study of sustainability reporting practices by the world's largest companies

Reporting on sustainability and HRM: a comparative study of sustainability reporting practices by the world's largest companies

Corporate Governance and Corporate Social Responsibility Disclosure: Evidence from the US Banking Sector

Managing Biodiversity Through Stakeholder Involvement: Why, Who, and for What Initiatives?

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