Purpose This study aims to verify whether non-financial disclosure in the construction industry (CI) responds to stakeholders’ information needs and explores the most frequent topics disclosed in terms of the environmental, social and governance (ESG) pillars. Design/methodology/approach This study uses a bag-of-words method and latent Dirichlet allocation to match stakeholders’ expectations with information disclosed by companies. This paper assesses the publicly available non-financial disclosure of the 46 European CI companies covered by the Refinitiv database with ESG scores. Findings This study provides two main findings. First, it shows the mismatch between stakeholders’ information needs and what they get in non-financial reporting. Despite non-financial information in CI disclosure, the information disclosed by many CI companies does not meet their users’ information needs. CI companies commonly focus on their sustainable products and health policy while omitting other topics of interest – the circular economy, unethical business behaviour, migrant policy and human trafficking. Second, this study indicates the defects of simple disclosure analysis based on keywords and highlights the importance of context in information analysis. Practical implications The proposed novel approach to text analysis offers several practical applications. It is a more effective tool for evaluating companies’ sustainability performance. It may be especially important to ESG rating providers. Additionally, the results may be of interest to companies wishing to improve their communication, and, in particular, to regulators and standard setters in two matters. The first is the need for more pressure to increase awareness among issuers to shift from disclosing large amounts of non-financial information to disclosing good quality non-financial information, which would be appropriate for meeting stakeholders’ expectations. The second is the necessity for deepening issuers’ understanding of the diverse stakeholders’ information needs, considering the substantial differences among industries and improving communication to meet them. Originality/value This study introduces text analysis that, apart from keywords, considers the context of these keywords’ appearances in a report’s narration. It allows a significantly improved understanding of the information disclosed and a more stable grounding for reasoning, leading to better and informed decisions. Moreover, this study verifies how the information disclosed matches stakeholders’ needs. Finally, it enriches the literature on sectoral analysis concerning non-financial disclosure.
Purpose This study aims to examine intellectual capital disclosure (ICD) on Twitter by 60 of the world’s largest companies and explains the main themes communicated to stakeholders. The second objective is to determine which topics provoke most stakeholders’ reactions. Design/methodology/approach The authors perform content analysis on more than 42,000 tweets to examine ICD practices along with the reactions of stakeholders in the form of retweets and “favorites” toward the information disclosed. Findings Intellectual capital (IC) is an important theme in corporate disclosure practices, as more than one-third of the published tweets refer to IC. The world’s largest companies focus on relational capital information, followed by human and structural capital. The main IC themes disclosed were management philosophy, corporate reputation and business partnering. Tweets related to IC are of greater interest to stakeholders than other tweets and provoke more reactions. There is no complete consistency between the topics most intensively disclosed by companies and those that elicit the most vivid responses from the addressees. Practical implications This study offers an understanding of the world’s largest companies’ practices that refer to ICD via social media and has implications for organizations in the creation and use of communication channels when developing a dialogue with stakeholders on topics regarding IC that may lead to better management of IC performance. Originality/value This paper is a response to the call for studies on ICD via social media, which is strongly highlighted in the recent literature concerning future research on IC and until now was almost absent in the field of business units. This research provides in-depth insights into the use of Twitter to disclose IC elements and indicates which fields and topics of this disclosure provoke stakeholders’ reactions, which is a novelty in ICD studies.
The paper advances the topic of food quality labels. The main goal of the study is to explore generation Y perceptions and expectations of food quality labels in the Czech Republic and Poland. The data were collected through an online survey from 372 respondents, involving 221 of Czechs and 151 of Poles. The statistical analysis procedures including descriptive statistics, Chi‑square test and Mann‑Whitney U test were performed to discover whether significant differences do exist between Czech and Polish consumer attitudes to the topic. Findings show that the number of food quality labels is perceived as strongly high and confusing, it is evident mainly in the Czech Republic. Impact of quality labels on food purchases is therefore limited and the labels benefits are not understood in full range. Statistically significant differences were confirmed between attitudes of Czechs and Poles to the food products characteristics that should be guaranteed by quality labels. Futher, Czech and Polish respondents differ in their opinion on the fee for the certification and credible administrator of the labels.
It is increasingly essential for companies to communicate appropriately about sustainability. In today’s world, with the massive spread of social media’s popularity as a critical communication channel, sustainability is also present in the Internet disclosure practices of many enterprises. It is also presumed that firms’ intellectual capital (IC) plays a vital role in the quality of corporate disclosure. Our paper aims to explore to what extent disclosure practices of firms via social media fulfill the needs of stakeholders for information related to sustainability. We also test how IC impacts this disclosure. We analyze tweets of the world’s largest energy industry companies to assess if this disclosure meets the stakeholders’ expectations regarding sustainability topics. Using a common measure of IC, we also check whether its level determines sustainability disclosure. This study provides several contributions to the literature. The findings may help understand companies’ responsiveness to sustainability information needs. The chief contribution also lies in its focus on how the IC level influences the sustainability disclosure practices via social media. The findings may have implications for organizations in creating and using social media channels when developing a dialogue with stakeholders on topics regarding sustainability. Conclusions also provide new insight on IC’s importance in corporate disclosure practices on sustainability.
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