The objective of this research is to examine whether stakeholder engagement in sustainability reporting constitutes the process of managing reputational risk. This research utilises Shrives and Brennan's (2017) framework of rhetorical strategies of non-compliance to obtain empirical evidence of reputation risk management (RRM) in the context of stakeholder engagement in sustainability reporting. Quantitative and qualitative content analysis was undertaken on 154 sustainability disclosures in both the annual and sustainability reports of large Australian companies. This research finds that large Australian companies engage with their stakeholders to manage reputational risk: to increase market share and pre-empt social issues. It is evident that large Australian companies use several forms of rhetorical statements in their sustainability disclosures with respect to RRM. However, there is no evidence that they shirk their responsibilities.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to ascertain whether Fortune Global 500 companies embed stakeholder engagement in their sustainability reporting. Design/methodology/approach Quantitative and qualitative content analyses were undertaken on 646 sustainability reports written in English over the period from 2015 to 2017. Findings This research found a low level of stakeholder engagement disclosures and scant evidence that sustainability disclosures were drawn upon stakeholder engagement practices. The findings indicate that stakeholder engagement was loosely embedded in sustainability reporting. Research limitations/implications Sustainability reports are the sole unit of analysis. Besides, this research is limited to a sample of companies and to a specific period, which limits the generalisation of the research findings. Practical implications Embedding stakeholder engagement in sustainability reporting holds companies accountable to their stakeholders. This is because the companies’ sustainability disclosures acknowledge the stakeholders’ concerns and information about the stakeholder engagement methods deployed to address those concerns. Social implications Stakeholder engagement promotes accountability by encouraging stakeholders to convey their opinions about corporate sustainability, participate in decision-making processes that impact them, and partake in defining the contents of sustainability reports. Originality/value This paper provides insights into the need to link sustainability disclosures with stakeholder engagement disclosures, by articulating who the relevant stakeholders are and how they are engaged on the various sustainability topics – rather than conceiving them to be separate and independent disclosures in a sustainability report.

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This paper investigates the tendency of companies to choose a big audit firm as their external auditor under the condition of their income smoothing tendency and risk tolerance to business and financial risks. Using 2,240 company-year observations listed on the Indonesian Stock Exchange, it generally reveals that companies with lower tendency to smooth earnings and companies with intolerable risk tend to choose big audit firms. These results are also consistent after controlling the asset size of companies (clients). In addition, companies would tend to show indifferent preference when the opportunistic and non-opportunistic income smoothing tendencies are in the same proportion. This paper also implies that audit firms tend to accept audit offers from clients with intolerable risk but with greater asset size to compensate higher risk. The situation where big audit firms accept clients with intolerable risk level indicates that non-big audit firms are not capable of doing so and audit firms in Indonesia operate in weak litigation environment.