The quality of sustainability assurance reports: The expertise and experience of assurance providers as determinants

Abstract

The aim of this study was to evaluate the quality of sustainability assurance reports and some aspects associated with it: expertise (a practitioner attribute) and experience (a characteristic of the contractual relationship). Specifically, it examines the impact of the assurance provider's expertise and experience on assurance quality, measured through an index based on a content analysis approach with items related to the reporting format, assurance procedures, and recommendations and opinions. This paper also examines the moderating effect of the type of assurance provider on these relationships. For a sample of international listed companies from the period 2007–14, our evidence shows greater quality of assurance reports when the assurers are industry specialists than when they are nonspecialists, because of their strong industry knowledge, and when the assurers have greater experience in the assurance market because of the extended length of the assurer–client relationship. In addition, the higher quality associated with industry expertise and experience is increased when assurance providers are also accounting firms, given their greater skills and training within the audit profession.

Are cultural values sufficient to improve stakeholder engagement human and labour rights issues?

“…Such preparation may also entail costs for the owners derived from the sensitivity of the information issued (García‐Sánchez & Martínez‐Ferrero, ). Thus, researchers have focused on analysing the internal and external factors that lead organisations to disclose a greater volume of CSR information as well as its quality level (García‐Sánchez, Martínez‐Ferrero, & García‐Benau, ; Martínez‐Ferrero, García‐Sánchez, & Ruiz‐Barbadillo, ).…”

A Provider’s Approach to the Assurance Market of Sustainability Reports in Spain

“…Knowledge spill-over happens when a provider performs more than one service to a same client (Beck and Wu 2006). This gives a better understanding of the client (Beck and Wu 2006) and provides greater assurance quality (Martínez-Ferrero et al 2018). Furthermore, it allows the transfer of abilities related to procedures or specific capabilities (Perego and Kolk 2012) that ease the provision of a quality service.…”

“…Specialization provides assurors with technical capabilities associated with greater quality (Abidin et al 2010). Specifically, industry specialization is evidenced as a factor associated with higher assurance quality (Martínez-Ferrero et al 2018). Thus, we considered specialization by industry and give a value of 2 if most of the assuror's clients belong to the same industry; 1 if most clients only belong to two or three different industries; and 0 otherwise.…”

“…Previous studies find that auditors are more qualified assurors (Martínez-Ferrero et al 2018;Pflugrath et al 2011;Zorio et al 2013) or state that the perceived quality provided by auditors and consultants is converging (De Beelde and Tuybens 2015). Unlike previous literature, we consider the auditing service variable according the provider perception of the assurance service and not professional background.…”

Environmental sustainability and financial performance of the small‐scale tea processors in Kenya

“…Much of the documented research applied cross‐sectional data in the analysis of factors influencing eco‐efficiency, which has resulted in the neglect of temporal effects. Specifically, random effects model was adopted unlike previous studies, which adopted descriptive analysis, content analysis or survey instruments (Martínez‐Ferrero, García‐Sánchez, & Ruiz‐Barbadillo, ).…”