Modern Slavery Disclosure Regulation and Global Supply Chains : Insights from Stakeholder Narratives on the UK Modern Slavery Act

Open access via Springer compact agreement Acknowledgements The authors would like to thank and acknowledge CPA Australia for partially supporting their data collection.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Social movement NGOs and the comprehensiveness of conflict mineral disclosures : evidence from global companies

Acknowledgements We thank discussants and attendees at the Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand (2016) conference, the Asia Pacific Interdisciplinary Research in Accounting (2016) conference and the Centre for Social and Environmental Accounting Research (2016) conference for their helpful comments. We also acknowledge comments from seminar presentations at the following universities: Canada (Simon Fraser University, The University of Calgary), the UK (The University of Bath, Durham University, Royal Holloway University of London, University of Roehampton), Germany (The University of Regensburg), New Zealand (The University of Auckland, Auckland University of Technology, The University of Otago).Peer reviewedPostprin

Disclosure responses to mining accidents : South African evidence

Mining activities generate significant social concerns in terms of employee safety and stakeholder scrutiny has increased considerably in recent years. Social and environmental accounting research is largely dedicated to environmental issues and the study of other components of social accounting is limited. This study examines safety disclosures in the annual reports, sustainability reports, and reactive corporate press releases of South African mining organisations following two major mining accidents occurring at Harmony Gold and Gold Fields’ mines. Results show that organisations react to perceived legitimacy threats through increased safety disclosures. The entire mining industry evidences an increase in disclosure levels after the incidents, suggesting that organisations do respond to increased stakeholder scrutiny threatening their legitimacy. Furthermore, our results provide evidence of an association between safety disclosure levels and firm size, social performance, risk, and number of fatalities, while the media attention devoted to mining accidents appears to be unrelated to safety disclosure levels. It is possible that stakeholder pressure, which motivates corporate social disclosures according to legitimacy and stakeholder theories, consists of various factors, which combined form the motivation to report. Media attention, therefore, cannot be considered in isolation as a driver of disclosure. Rather, a combination of variables such as size, social responsibility performance, number of fatalities, risk, and media attention could serve as a proxy for social pressure.http://www.elsevier.com/locate/accfo

A comprehensive literature review on, and the construction of a framework for, environmental legitimacy, accountability and proactivity

This paper identifies three conceptually distinct, but interrelated concepts regarding corporate environmental behaviour from the literature e environmental legitimacy, environmental accountability, and environmental proactivity e and shows how they can be integrated into a single framework. This is done in a context where prior studies in the literature do not relate these concepts to each other or place the concepts within a meaningful context, nor integrate them into a single framework. The framework demonstrates an organisational journey towards achieving legitimacy in environmental endeavours. Environmental legitimacy is conditional upon the public evaluation of corporate environmental performance and environmental reporting (environmental accountability), which in turn, requires organisations to invest in environmental management and accounting systems and stakeholder engagement (environmental proactivity). The paper identifies company, stakeholder and other characteristics that influence the constructs in the framework and also propose a research agenda based on this framework. Environmental performance constitutes the central concept in the framework, acknowledging that improved environmental performance promotes the ultimate goal of sustainability. The framework suggests that the judicious management of environmental performance and reporting, the two components of environmental accountability, results in environmental legitimacy. Furthermore, environmental accountability can be enhanced by environmental proactivity, a concept comprising environmental management and environmental accounting, as well as stakeholder engagement. This synthesis of the factors that influence and contribute to environmental performance is the framework's main contribution.http://www.elsevier.com/ locate/jclepro2016-09-30hb201

Are CSR disclosures value relevant? Cross-country evidence

Using proprietary data that rate corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosures of firms in 21 countries, this study examines how the strength of nation-level institutions affects the extent of CSR disclosures. We then examine the valuation implications of CSR disclosures and consider how the relation between CSR disclosures and firm value varies across countries. In contrast to prior studies, we separate CSR disclosures into an expected and unexpected portion where the unexpected portion is a proxy for the incremental information contained in CSR disclosures. We observe a positive relation between unexpected CSR disclosure and firm value measured by Tobin's Q. We also find that, while countries with strong nation-level institutions promote more CSR disclosures, the valuation of a unit increase in unexpected CSR disclosures is higher when nation-level institutions are weak.http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rear202017-09-30hb2017Accountin

Value Added as part of Sustainability Reporting: Reporting on Distributional Fairness or Obfuscation?

Distributional fairness of corporate distributions is an important social issue linked to accounting for equality. Value added and the information contained in the value added statement can conceptually be regarded as a reflection of how the company is managed for all stakeholders. We investigate value added information published in sustainability reports to determine if the information provided is useful for assessing distributional fairness between stakeholders. We find that the value added information disclosed lack conciseness, comparability and understandability. The divergence is considerable and the explanations of the disclosed information so limited that the usefulness of the value added disclosures must be questioned. Our results suggest several obfuscating techniques in the disclosure of value added information, including disclosing information that is conceptually compromised, resulting in comparability issues and disclosing information that can’t be verified by reconciling back to the financial statements. Our findings have clear ethical and moral implications as they stress the societal issue of distributional fairness. It seems that companies are either reluctant to provide value added information that is useful, or deliberately use value added disclosures to obfuscate. Information reflecting distributional fairness is therefore compromised

Black economic empowerment, legitimacy and the value added statement: evidence from post-apartheid South Africa

We examine why companies in South Africa voluntarily provide a value added statement (VAS). The VAS can be used by management to communicate with employees and thereby establish a record of legitimacy. Since we want to establish if the VAS is used to establish symbolic or substantive legitimacy, we examine whether production of a VAS is associated with actual performance in labour-related areas. To measure labour-related performance, we use an independent Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) rating. We find that BEE performance is significantly and positively related to the voluntary publication of a VAS. Our results suggest that BEE performance and disclosure of a VAS are two elements of a strategy used by South African companies to establish their substantive legitimacy with labour. Copyright (c) The Authors. Journal compilation (c) 2009 AFAANZ.

The usefulness of the added value statement : a review of the literature

The increased incidence of publication of the value added statement in South Africa does not seem to be supported by evidence substantiating its usefulness. This study sets out to determine whether sufficient evidence on the usefulness of the statement, from the perspective of the users, exists. A review of the local and international literature revealed 23 studies using empirical tests or surveys to obtain evidence of usefulness. Despite some contradictory claims, the results indicate that on the whole the studies reported in the literature do not demonstrate sufficient evidence of usefulness from the perspective of the users of the value added statement

Shareholder's corporate environmental disclosure needs

We do a survey of individual shareholders' corporate environmental disclosure needs. We find that South African individual shareholders require companies to disclose the following specific environmental information: environmental risks and impacts, environmental policy, measurable environmental targets, performance against targets, environmental costs disclosed separately, and an independent environmental audit report. Respondents prefer this information in a separate section of the annual report and on company websites. Individual shareholders want such disclosure to be prescribed by law and/or stock exchange rules. The most popular reason why they want environmental information disclosed is to hold companies accountable for their environmental stewardship. A high percentage of individual shareholders also indicate that they want disclosure because they are concerned about climate change. These findings imply that legislators and standard setters may have to consider changing disclosure laws and standards

Disclosure responses to mining accidents: South African evidence

Mining activities generate significant social concerns in terms of employee safety and stakeholder scrutiny has increased considerably in recent years. Social and environmental accounting research is largely dedicated to environmental issues and the study of other components of social accounting is limited. This study examines safety disclosures in the annual reports, sustainability reports, and reactive corporate press releases of South African mining organisations following two major mining accidents occurring at Harmony Gold and Gold Fields’ mines. Results show that organisations react to perceived legitimacy threats through increased safety disclosures. The entire mining industry evidences an increase in disclosure levels after the incidents, suggesting that organisations do respond to increased stakeholder scrutiny threatening their legitimacy. Furthermore, our results provide evidence of an association between safety disclosure levels and firm size, social performance, risk, and number of fatalities, while the media attention devoted to mining accidents appears to be unrelated to safety disclosure levels. It is possible that stakeholder pressure, which motivates corporate social disclosures according to legitimacy and stakeholder theories, consists of various factors, which combined form the motivation to report. Media attention, therefore, cannot be considered in isolation as a driver of disclosure. Rather, a combination of variables such as size, social responsibility performance, number of fatalities, risk, and media attention could serve as a proxy for social pressure.http://www.elsevier.com/locate/accfo