Drawing on the complexity theory and responding to the recent calls to use such creative methods that mix between a quantitative and qualitative approach. Therefore, this study fills the literature gap, adding novelties, showing evidence from the unexplored (or underexplored) European context and, consequently, shedding light to inconclusive results in previous research concerning the effect of audit committee (AC) and board characteristics on corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure by applying a novel research methodology: the fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis. The data were collected from Eikon database for a sample of the top 69 nonfinancial European companies (based on market capitalisation) for the period 2016-2018. The study results support the equifinality and complexity tenets of complexity theory. It also suggests that CSR disclosure relies on a complex configuration of some AC attributes, for example, independence, financial expert member, chair independence, size and activity, and other board characteristics (independence, gender, size, activity, and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) duality). These characteristics play a leading part as a recipe ingredient and, in an appropriate combination, promote achieving high CSR disclosure levels. Our empirical results offer multidimensional and valuable insights for professionals, regulators, and policymakers in establishing and revising the guidelines regarding the AC and board of directors' composition.

Integrated reporting is a fairly recent phenomenon in the corporate reporting realm. Its dawn marks a new age of corporate reporting where financial and non‐financial information and their interrelation create an integrated and holistic approach for telling a value creation story. In tandem with this transformation, business sustainability in general and environmental performance, in particular, are also gaining prominence in the corporate landscape. This scholarly article investigates the relationship between integrated reporting and corporate environmental performance. A panel‐data is used to carry out the study using a sample of 110 firms listed on the Johannesburg Stock exchange for the years 2014–2018, where Integrated Reporting was first mandated. The empirical results are robust and consistent with our predictions in that integrated reporting is found positively associated with corporate environmental performance. Our findings pave the way for a new stream of literature on the transformation and the connectivity functions of integrated reporting.

This is the first study that presents a full picture of the field by using a combination of two methodologies, bibliometric and social network analysis (SNA). Thus, this work maps the knowledge of previous research and suggest new avenues for future research for the relationship between board characteristics and corporate social responsibility (CSR) and CSR disclosure (CSRD). We analysed 242 articles published on Web of Science database (WoS) journals for the period 1992-2019. The results show that board characteristics have a significant impact on CSR literature in terms of citations and high-quality journals. Moreover, the trend of the papers published in the field is increasing in the last five years. Our work clusters the literature according to keywords and draws the primary authors' networks. This study also draws potential future avenues for research in the field in terms of research gaps (governance mechanisms, variables, countries, etc.). Furthermore, our results suggest some potential areas of interest for future political reforms of board of directors' guidelines.