An examination of social and environmental reporting strategies

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine three electric utilities, two publicly owned and one privately owned. The basis of this examination is legitimacy theory employing a small sample case‐type approach. In particular we are interested in social and environmental disclosures found in annual reports and how these disclosures differentiate between publicly owned and privately owned enterprises. In our examination we use some traditional efficiency measures but we also employ effectiveness measures relying on the proprietary costs and information costs views in our analysis. Our major findings are that ownership status and size, which are likely to affect legitimacy, influence the amount of social and environmental disclosure. Finally, while environmental disclosures seem to be related to information costs and benefits, this relationship does not seem to hold for social disclosures.

Determinants of voluntary CSR disclosure: empirical evidence from Germany

“…3 Other attempts to explain voluntary CSR disclosures have also suggested that firm characteristics are important determinants of disclosure activities (Cormier and Gordon 2001;Meek et al 1995). Empirical studies have used a wide range of measures that, for example, include industry membership, the number of shareholders, and press coverage (Milne 2002).…”

“…Furthermore, while former studies have often focused on either annual reports (Cormier and Gordon 2001) or on specific CSR reports (Tate et al 2010), we focus on the various reports that companies could use to disclose CSR information. This includes the annual report (which is mandatory), but also voluntary CSR reports, as well as other specific reports (e.g., environmental, social, and human capital reports).…”

Sustainability Reporting by the Top 100 Companies in the S&P 500 Index: Findings from Some Recent Data

“…They are frequently subject to public attention simply because of (a) the volume of their businesses; (b) their reach across the globe in terms of the widely scattered sources of materials and labor that they access; (c) the geographically dispersed markets where they sell their products and services; (d) their potential to make a large impact on their physical and social environment; and (e) the extensively diverse communities that they serve. Over the past few decades, researchers have found that companies that were large in size and were otherwise in the public"s eyes tended to make more voluntary disclosures of sustainability (Belkaoui & Karpik1989;Cowen, Ferreri, & Parker 1987;Patten 1991;Roberts 1992;Hackston & Milne 1996;Cormier & Gordon 2001;Huafang & Jianguo 2007;Michelon 2011;Gamerschlag et al 2011;and Chan, Watson & Woodliff 2014). Globally, Chu, Chatterjee and Brown"s (2013) study showed that larger Chinese companies disclosed more information about their greenhouse gas emissions than their smaller counterparts, and more recently, Herbohn, Walker and Loo (2014) studied the link between sustainability disclosure and sustainability performance in the Australian extractive industries to find that firm size was positively associated with sustainability.…”

Environmental Life Cycle Costs in the Australian Food Packaging Supply Chain

“…Other studies (Guthrie and Parker 1990;Hackston and Milne 1996;Frost and Wilmshurst 2000;Wilmshurst and Frost 2000;Wilmshurst and Frost 2001) have concentrated upon the top 50, 100 or 500 companies on specific national stock exchanges for their sample population and have generally used mailed-survey questiormaires to collect the data. Cormier and Gordon (2001) took a different approach and used a case-study approach investigating electric utihties, two publicly owned and one privately owned. They found that more social and environmental information was disclosed by the publicly owned companies and suggested "that legitimacy theory, proprietary costs and information costs" be used to investigate and…”