The forms of repetition in social and environmental reports: insights from Hume's notion of ?impressions?

This paper focuses on the use of repetition, both in narrative and visual forms, in social and environmental reports. It investigates the forms of repetition as a rhetorical device adopted by the preparer of a social and environmental report in helping the process of knowledge acquisition, as outlined by Hume (1739). Drawing from Hume?s (1739) philosophical idea of an ?impression?, and the work of Davison (2014a) we classify repetitions into ?identical?, ?similar? and ?accumulated? forms. It is argued that the rationale for distinguishing between the different forms of repetition can be linked to their different potential or intensity in acting on different stimuli with a view to enhance learning. The empirical element of this study is based on the stand-alone social and environmental reports of a sample of 86 cooperative banks in Northern Italy; the analysis of these reports indicates that repetition is widespread and that cooperative banks use all forms of repetition, albeit to a varying extent within the different reported themes. The paper contributes to the literature by offering an alternative interpretation of repetition using an interdisciplinary perspective and by providing new insights on social and environmental reporting practices in the cooperative banking sector

Corporate Social Reporting in European Banks: The Effects on a Firm's Market Value

Despite the increasing level of interest in CSR issues, it is not yet clear what real value the market assigns to social reporting. By applying the value relevance analysis to a sample of 130 European‐listed banks, the present work proposes a key to understanding the relationship between social reporting and the value that the market attributes to banks that publicize their commitment to CSR through social reporting. The analysis for the entire sample does not provide evidence that investors attribute value relevance to social reporting (i.e. there is not a significant correlation between the publication of a social report and the stock price). Cross‐ country analysis shows that in some countries the social report is value‐relevant, and positively affects the stock price; in others it remains value‐relevant but negatively affects the stock price. Our findings could have several implications for banks, investors, and policymakers