Does context matter for sustainability disclosure? Institutional factors in Southeast Asia

Abstract

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.

Cross‐sector alliances in the global refugee crisis: An institutional theory approach

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CSR politics of non‐recognition: Justification fallacies marginalising criticism, society, and environment

“…Companies disclose either as a response to perceived legitimacy threats (Woo, Jung, & Jin, 2020) or as a means to maintain legitimacy among stakeholders (Cormier & Magnan, 2015). The main bulk of the literature on non-financial disclosure concerns diverse determinants of disclosure (Kraft, 2018), such as the role of context (Tran & Beddewela, 2020). Second, there is research providing direction on the impact disclosure has on legitimacy (Cormier & Magnan, 2015) and on financial performance (Lawal, May, & Stahl, 2017).…”

Green infrastructure: systematic literature review

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