Sustainability disclosures in emerging economies: Evidence from human capital disclosures on listed banks' websites in Bangladesh

Abstract

A company reports its most important resource—human capital (HC) under the social sustainability disclosures as per the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) standards. Based on stakeholder theory, the study examines the level of voluntary HC disclosures (HCD) in the websites of all the 30 listed banks of Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE), Bangladesh. Applying content analysis with a comprehensive 30‐item disclosure index shows that the intensity of HC disclosure on banks' websites is very stumpy in Bangladesh's context. Employee training was found as the highest disclosed item. In contrast, no bank has disclosed information about HC's financial values, employees' age profile, employee education, whistleblower policy, trade union activity, employee satisfaction, employee attrition, employee disability, HR designated section, and child labor. In this age of information, the HC disclosure index formulated in this study can be used as a replica by the banks of Bangladesh and other emerging economies to improve their voluntary HCD practices through the websites. The present study adds to the existing HCD literature, where there has been a divergent lack of research on corporate websites.

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