The influence of corporate governance, industry and country factors on environmental reporting

On the effectiveness of private transnational governance regimes—Evaluating corporate sustainability reporting according to the Global Reporting Initiative

“…The sustainability reporting literature has shown that sector affiliation is a significant explanatory variable for the likelihood of a company producing social and environmental disclosures as well as the length of these disclosures (Bowen, 2000;Cormier & Magnan, 1999;Halme & Huse, 1997;Neu, Warsame, & Pedwell, 1998) (for recent overviews see Fifka, 2013;Fortanier, Kolk, & Pinkse, 2011). Based on these insights from the literature, we thus hypothesize that industry pressures will shape corporate engagement with CSR challenges; we would expect that different industries will reveal differences in the extent to which they address social and environmental challenges.…”

“…At the same time, many developing countries display governance gaps so that compliance with even basic legislation cannot be taken for granted (Fox, 2004), while pressure from environmental NGOs and domestic consumers is largely absent (Logsdon, Thomas, & Van Buren, 2006). Along these lines, country-level differences in non-financial reporting have been identified in terms of the likelihood of reporting (Halme & Huse, 1997;Kolk, 2010), report content (Baskin, 2006;Chapple & Moon, 2005;Kolk, 2005) or the likelihood of assurance (Kolk & Perego, 2010). To an extent, these differences stem from country-level differences in reporting legislation (Guthrie & Parker, 1990;Kolk, Walhain, & Van de Wateringen, 2001); yet, the salience of specific pressure groups (Neu, et al, 1998;Van der Laan Smith, Adhikari, & Tondkar, 2005) as well as underlying cultural and institutional contexts (Fortanier, et al, 2011;Kolk, 2005) have also been shown to result in country-level differences in sustainability reporting.…”

Does board composition have an impact on CSR reporting?

“…Ever since the early studies on board composition by Halme and Huse (1997) and Haniffa and Cooke (2005), the topic of whether and how board composition variables affect CSR reporting has gained more and more momentum in empirical-quantitative corporate governance and CSR reporting research. In addition to heterogeneity of the results of the analysis of the board composition variables, also, the CSR reporting measures are not comparable.…”

Secondary Stakeholder Influence on CSR Disclosure: An Application of Stakeholder Salience Theory

“…Environmental NGOs' potential influence is generally presumed but rarely empirically addressed (Deegan and Blomquist 2006). Although environmental stakeholders have not been a major topic in existing disclosure literature, research on environmental stakeholders and their role in environmental disclosure are nevertheless expanding fields (e.g., Halme and Huse 1997;O'Dywer et al 2005;Wheeler and Elkington 2001). Besides, environmental disclosure is an important subset of CSR disclosure.…”