Abstract
Purpose: This study aims to evaluate the impact of corporate governance on sustainability reporting by investigating companies operating in the Australian resources industry.
Design/methodology/approach: This study investigates the relationships between the total sustainability disclosures and, separately, the three aspects of sustainability disclosures – economic, environmental and social – and corporate governance mechanisms proxy by various attributes of board composition. The sustainability disclosures were scored using Ong et al.’s (2016) index.
Findings: Significant positive correlations were found between the extent of sustainability disclosures and the proportion of independent directors, multiple directorships and female directors on the board.
Originality/value: Unlike traditional content analysis methods, this study adopts a newly developed Global Reporting Initiatives-based reporting index that identifies companies with good sustainability performance by aligning companies’ disclosures to their sustainability performance.
Keywords
Australia, Corporate governance, Sustainability reporting, Hard and soft disclosures, Resources industry
Document Type
Journal Article
Date of Publication
1-1-2020
Publication Title
Social Responsibility Journal
Publisher
Emerald
School
School of Business and Law / Centre for Innovative Practice
RAS ID
28865
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License
Comments
This is an Author's Accepted Manuscript of: Ong, T., & Djajadikerta, H. G. (2020). Corporate governance and sustainability reporting in the Australian resources industry: An empirical analysis. Social Responsibility Journal, 16(1).
https://doi.org/10.1108/SRJ-06-2018-0135