The expansion of non-financial reporting: an exploratory study
By Hervé Stolowy, Luc Paugam. Accounting and Business Research, 2018
284 citations recorded by the source corpus.
We investigate how non-financial reporting (NFR) is defined and has expanded in recent years. First, we explore the heterogeneity in definitions and current NFR practices. We find a lack of convergence between regulators and standard-setters, as well as leading sustainable firms. Second, we examine the changes in the extent and type of NFR reported by firms over the period 2006–2016. Based on a sample of firms in South Africa, we document a significant increase in the amount of NFR, particularly between 2006 and 2011. This change appears to be driven by new environmental, human capital, performance and strategic disclosures. The relative importance of financial information in corporate reporting decreased substantially over the same period. Third, we compare reporting practices for corporate social responsibility (CSR)/sustainability information between constituents of the S&P 500 index and the EuroStoxx 600 index. We find that overall, the percentage of firms issuing CSR/sustainability reports increased dramatically between 2002 and 2015. Constituents of the U.S. stock index and growth firms are less likely to report CSR/sustainability information, whereas firms in the European stock index in environmentally sensitive industries, with high capital intensity and good CSR performance, larger and with better financial performance, are more likely to report CSR/sustainability information.
Subfields: Accounting, Marketing, Strategy and Management
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/3b058e9f4ef894a0a3d0d7c204063740749565e9
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Citations in the corpus
- Can Sustainable Investment Yield Better Financial Returns: A Comparative Study of ESG Indices and MSCI Indices (2019, background): “…et al. 2017; la Torre et al. 2016), Europe’s Sustainability Index (Charlo et al. 2015, 2017; Lopez et al. 2007; del Mar Miralles-Quiros et al. 2017; Ortas et al. 2014; Pilar Marti et al. 2015; Stolowy and Paugam 2018), and Australian markets (Lokuwaduge and Heenetigala 2017; Tularam et al. 2010).”
- Disclosure on the Sustainable Development Goals – Evidence from Europe (2021, unknown): “This finding is in line with Stolowy and Paugam (2018) and Cho and Patten (2007) and indicates that for our sample of European firms, environmental pressure is a significant driver of both the quantity and quality of SDG reporting, as well as implicit disclosure.”