Corporate sustainability is a dynamic, socially constructed concept. Relatedly, to understand the variations in the disclosure of corporate sustainability activities across countries, we need to inherently explore their underlying sociopolitical contexts. At present our understanding in this regard, is deficient. We respond to this extant research gap by adopting a multi‐country approach to investigate the relationship between countries' institutional environments and firms' sustainability disclosure (SD) practices, across six countries in the Southeast Asian region. Our findings reflect a common focus of Southeast Asian firms on community and human resources (HRs) related disclosures. Nevertheless, nuanced differences in their overall SD levels confirm the influence of differing legal, normative, and sociocultural systems in engendering greater disclosure and transparency at a national level. By quantifying the institutional environment and identifying external influencing factors, our study provides a useful framework grounded in neo‐institutional theory to widen the existing understanding of how institutional pressures can be measured and compared across different contexts.

Purpose This paper aims to examine the relationship between a diverse set of corporate governance (CG) mechanisms and corporate sustainability disclosure (CSD) in Southeast Asian countries under national stakeholder reform. Design/methodology/approach Data analysis is based on 171 of the largest companies across six Southeast Asian countries using a 30-item CSD measure. Findings The authors find that there are wide variations in the levels of CSD across the countries. The findings indicate that board size, board gender diversity, block ownership and the presence of a sustainability committee are significant determinants of CSD. Additionally, whilst more stringent stakeholder governance reform motivates firms to publish more sustainability information, it fails to influence the effectiveness of the board of directors in promoting CSD. Practical implications Findings of this study highlight the essential role internal governance structure plays in monitoring corporate actions and enabling corporations to reduce their legitimacy gap. The findings further encourage regulators and policymakers to question, with utmost importance, the effectiveness of stakeholder reform in making significant organisational changes. Originality/value There is a dearth of studies that examine the CG-CSD nexus in relation to specific institutional characteristics. Existing studies mainly focus on a single country with similar institutional environments and thus limiting the ability to understand the “context specificity” of sustainability content development. This paper provides an overview of stakeholder reform in Southeast Asian countries and empirically substantiates the relationship between CG and CSD across six countries undergoing such reforms in the region.

This study seeks to examine the influence of multi-layered gender diversity mechanisms on firms’ decision to engage in pro-sustainable performance in the context of Hospitality and Tourism (H&T) firms worldwide. Using Powell’s Panel Quantile Regression (PQR) model, this paper finds that females on boards and sub-boards tend to display a more communal, participative, and democratic leadership style, demonstrating greater responsibilities toward stakeholders’ concerns and engaging with sustainability strategies to make a positive contribution to society. Our findings also reaffirm that women on the boards of H&T firms are more community-oriented and philanthropically driven than women in senior management positions who can be perceived as being profit-oriented rather than stakeholder-oriented as managers. Our results offer implications for policymakers and practitioners, and we suggest several avenues for future studies that could build upon our research.

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