Purpose – Drawing on agency theory and legitimacy theory perspectives, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the influence of board characteristics on sustainability reporting of listed companies in the Colombo Stock Exchange (CSE), Sri Lanka. Design/methodology/approach – A sample of 148 listed companies was drawn from the CSE using stratified random sampling method and data were collected from the 2012 annual reports. The proposed hypotheses were tested using a hierarchical binary logistic regression. Findings – This study documents that board size and dual leadership are positively associated with sustainability reporting and boards with female directors are negatively associated with sustainability reporting. This study also found that sustainability reporting is likely to be influenced by firm size and firm growth. Additionally, the study also reveals that younger firms are likely to adopt sustainability reporting. Originality/value – This is the first study to examine the influence of board characteristics on sustainability reporting in Sri Lanka, considered as a developing economy with an emerging equity market.

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Purpose -We expect an explosive application of these technologies to take place when they become mature and may further assist auditors in improving the quality of their work. How to use some of the computer-assisted auditing techniques (CAATs) more effectively with the emerging information technologies. Design/methodology/approach -Constructed an infrastructure with the support of emerging technologies. Electronic auditing (EA) framework -prepared and used with information technology, these examples are object-oriented distributed middlewares, internet security technologies, and intelligent agents. Findings -How a CPA may conveniently audit the loan account of a bank with EA framework. Demonstration/application. Research limitations/implications -Auditors will have to design one specialized audit software for each auditee's electronic data processing (EDP) system if the EDP system uses proprietary file formats or different operating systems. The EA has some limitations. This approach depends on distributed middlewares standards, i.e. CORBA, DCOM, or Java RMI, to enable the interconnections of the auditor's GAS I , auditee's EDP systems. Practical implications -This system emulates EDP applications in the banking industry and is based on the Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) architecture industrial standard. Originality/value -How auditor could effectively apply existing CAATs with the support of the modern information technologies such as object-oriented distributed middleware, internet security technologies, and intelligent agents. Furthermore, this article proposes a new auditing approach that we call EA. Application in banking and financial institution for auditing banks loan account.

Corporate governance (CG) disclosure is a fundamental theme of the 'modern' corporate-regulatory system, which encompasses providing 'governance' information to the public in a variety of ways. This study explores the voluntary CG practices of 50 corporations, over and above the mandatory requirements of clause 49 of the listing agreement. In order to study the voluntary CG disclosure practices, a 'content analysis' was done, and finally, a 'CG disclosure' index was prepared. We have primarily used 'secondary' sources of information, both from the 'report on CG' and the 'annual reports' for the financial year 2003-2004 and 2004-2005. As a part of voluntary CG disclosure, a total of 40 items have been selected from the CG section of the annual reports and proxy forms. In order to provide a comparison 'across' industries, corporations have been selected from four industries, viz., software, textiles, sugar and paper. Appropriate statistical tools and techniques have been applied for the analysis. It has been observed that "corporations are following less than 50 percent of the items of CG disclosure index. Moreover, there is no significant difference among the disclosure scores across the four industries".

This paper analyzes and reports on studies that examine the extent to which international auditing boards have accomplished the goal of reducing the expectation gap in reporting on uncertainties. This is because there has been a long-running controversy between the auditing profession and the community of financial statement users concerning the responsibilities of the auditors to the users. Enron and WorldCom scandals have provoked the public to incite the government and professional bodies to impose stringent regulation in protecting their interests. It also suggests the solutions to minimize the gap and enhance the public's perception towards the profession.