Localization or standardization? A comparative analysis of multinational agrochemical corporations’ environmental disclosure practices in India

Abstract

This thesis research seeks to provide insight into the corporate environmental disclosure practices of multinational agrochemical parent corporations, their public subsidiaries in India and domestic Indian agrochemical corporations. The study analyzes whether environmental disclosure practices are more strongly influenced by country-of-operation or country-of-origin. These analyses use a recently developed content analysis instrument named consolidated narrative interrogation (CONI), which is capable of measuring the diversity, quantity and quality of environmental disclosures. Results indicate that the quantity, quality and diversity of Indian agrochemical subsidiaries’ corporate environmental disclosures are more similar to domestic Indian companies than their parent companies. These results may be explained by the institutional theory. The results of this study are of significance because they provide evidence that multinational corporations may not transfer their environmental disclosure practices to host countries. Instead, environmental disclosure practices of subsidiaries are localized to their host country and are not standardized with parent company practices.