Stakeholder or Legitimacy Theory? The Rationale behind a Company’s Materiality Analysis: Evidence from Indonesia

Abstract

Recently, more and more research has examined sustainability reports, including how to process materiality analysis in sustainability reports. However, the motivation for why and how companies prepare materiality analysis has not received much attention from researchers. This study fills a gap in the sustainability literature related to materiality analysis by identifying the theoretical motivations of companies in conducting materiality analysis. The literature review on materiality analysis also showed that the existing measurements have not used the GRI 102-46 and 102-47, which are guidelines for companies in conducting materiality analysis based on the GRI. Therefore, this study developed a measurement of materiality analysis based on GRI 102-46 and 102-47. This study aimed to assess materiality analysis in sustainability reports based on the perspectives of legitimacy theory and stakeholder theory. The research sample was 150 sustainability reports of company listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange from 2018 to 2020. The researcher developed an index using the GRI approach to measure the quality of materiality analysis. This study proves that the legitimacy theory perspective is mainly the basis for the company in conducting materiality analysis. This study also found no significant improvement in the quality of materiality topic analysis from 2018 to 2020. Of the four financial characteristics, only DER has a significant relationship with materiality analysis, which indicates that the disclosure of materiality analysis tends to be related to the company’s debt condition. The study fills a gap in the literature by contributing to research on sustainability reporting quality, specifically on materiality analysis.

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