The potential bias for sustainability reporting of global upstream oil and gas companies: a systematic literature review of the evidence

Abstract

Sustainability reporting is very important for upstream oil and gas companies. The characteristics of industrial operations require direct involvement in environmental management, which causes better policies. Therefore, it is important to explain that these companies are motivated by ecological awareness or a specific purpose. This research conducts critical discourse analysis with a systematic literature review (SLR) approach of the last eleven years related to the sustainability reporting of the oil and gas industry. Various factors influence companies when implementing sustainability reporting, such as increasing credibility, maintaining reputation, transparency, and avoiding legal sanctions. The results showed several global upstream oil and gas companies still have the potential bias for sustainability reporting because they have not implemented the triple bottom line concept. This potential bias is related to irregularities and fraud in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) practice. However, the organization as a ruling group can still carry out its mission of hegemony in the environment and the surrounding community. This research contributes academically and practically because it discusses various studies that used several methods, including surveys, case studies, experiments, and literature to form its conclusions. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11301-022-00292-7.

The effect of construction sustainability system interactions on financial performance: a sociotechnical perspective

“…A review of the GRI database determined that the reports from large construction companies were much more comprehensive than those from medium and small construction companies. In addition, the concern that resource asymmetry in small to medium construction companies would bias their sustainability initiatives (Massa et al, 2015) and bias the data collected from these organisations (Kwarto et al, 2022) led to the decision to exclude small to medium construction companies from the study.…”

“…In addition, the concern that resource asymmetry in small to medium construction companies would bias their sustainability initiatives (Massa et al. , 2015) and bias the data collected from these organisations (Kwarto et al ., 2022) led to the decision to exclude small to medium construction companies from the study.…”

“…This led to a sample of 60 GRI-G4 reports from large construction organisations. The selection criteria specified large construction organisations because the reports for small to medium construction organisations based on this framework may contain reporting biases (Kwarto et al, 2022). GRI reports require multiparticipant input and the smaller number of stakeholders available to small-medium construction organisations may introduce stakeholder reporting biases, reducing the representativeness of the report data (Massa et al, 2015).…”

Looking back to look ahead: MRQ's past five years of evidence-based management research in numbers

“…Research on sustainability, inequality, digitalization, and management for non-profits will receive greater attention in MRQ as the journal moves forward. Recent MRQ articles on climate change and organizations (Díaz Tautiva et al 2022), (corporate) environmental sustainability and performance (Bhatt and Ghuman 2022;Kwarto et al 2022), corporate social responsibility (Rojas Molina et al 2022;Frerichs and Teichert 2021), non-profits (Nordin et al 2022) social enterprises (Armstrong and Grobbelaar 2022), supply chain management (Durugbo and Al-Balushi 2022) and entrepreneurship (Kuckertz and Brändle 2022) in crises show the way forward. We intend to publish more of such empirically grounded and practically relevant research.…”

Environmental costs, environmental disclosure, and tax avoidance: evidence from mining and energy companies in Indonesia and Australia

“…The focus and domination of environmental reporting as part of sustainability information show an inclining trend (Bartels et al , 2016) as there has been an increase in the growth of environmental disclosure since 2013, especially in Europe, the Asia-Pacific region, the USA, France, Spain and Australia. The growth can be motivated by the use of sustainability reporting such as reducing the reputational costs of tax avoidance for nonenvironmentally sensitive firms (Rudyanto and Pirzada, 2021) and increasing credibility, transparency and avoiding legal sanctions (Kwarto et al , 2022).…”