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We examine the relationship between disclosure of nonfinancial information and analyst forecast accuracy using firm-level data from 31 countries. We use the issuance of stand-alone corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports to proxy for disclosure of nonfinancial information. We find that the issuance of stand-alone CSR reports is associated with lower analyst forecast error. This relationship is stronger in countries that are more stakeholder-oriented—i.e., in countries where CSR performance is more likely to affect firm financial performance. The relationship is also stronger for firms and countries with more opaque financial disclosure, suggesting that issuance of stand-alone CSR reports plays a role complementary to financial disclosure. These results hold after we control for various factors related to firm financial transparency and other potentially confounding institutional factors. Collectively, our findings have important implications for academics and practitioners in understanding the function of CSR disclosure in financial markets. Data Availability: The data are publicly available from the sources identified in the paper.

We examine a potential benefit associated with the initiation of voluntary disclosure of corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities: a reduction in firms’ cost of equity capital. We find that firms with a high cost of equity capital in the previous year tend to initiate disclosure of CSR activities in the current year and that initiating firms with superior social responsibility performance enjoy a subsequent reduction in the cost of equity capital. Further, initiating firms with superior social responsibility performance attract dedicated institutional investors and analyst coverage. Moreover, these analysts achieve lower absolute forecast errors and dispersion. Finally, we find that firms exploit the benefit of a lower cost of equity capital associated with the initiation of CSR disclosure. Initiating firms are more likely than non-initiating firms to raise equity capital following the initiations; among firms raising equity capital, initiating firms raise a significantly larger amount than do non-initiating firms.

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The contemporary business environment has raised the strategic importance of the maintenance function in organizations which have significant investment in physical assets. Four strategic dimensions of maintenance management are identified, namely service‐delivery options, organization and work structuring, maintenance methodology and support systems. The alternatives available are reviewed: the guidelines for selection of these alternatives, the key decision areas in each of the four dimensions, as well as the critical success factors for the transformation process are discussed. The two factors that permeate in these strategic dimensions are human factors and information flow; the latter can be made more efficient by embracing the e‐maintenance model.