Sustainability disclosure and reputation: a comparative study

This paper aims to explore the relationship between a company’s sustainability disclosure and its reputation. The sample consists of 57 companies in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI) and a control group belonging to the Dow Jones Global Index (World1), matched on country, industry and size. The extent of sustainability disclosure is determined using the content analysis method performed via multimedia. The empirical research provides evidence that reputation does affect the extent of sustainability disclosure. Furthermore, results indicate that European companies disclose more than US companies. This paper is exploratory in nature as it investigates the effects of reputation on corporate sustainability disclosure (CSD). It also examines sustainability disclosure by type of information – strategic, financial, environmental and social – and it extends previous studies on CSD by concentrating on information released not only on annual reports, but also in multimedia, such as social reports, environmental reports and sustainability reports.sustainability disclosure; reputation; legitimacy theory; USA, Europe, UK; content analysis

Performance evaluation in research departments: from the Balanced Scorecard to the Strategy Map

Notwithstanding a growing interest towards performance management systems for universities, little is known on their application to academic departments. Being an institution dedicated to research, a department presents specific characteristics: creativity, professional autonomy, low degree of repetitiveness, uncertainty on results, unclear relation between input and output. Such peculiarities make the evaluation and measurement of its performance particularly difficult. The purpose of the paper is the exploration and development of a performance evaluation approach which is suitable for the particular features of an academic department. As this paper is explorative in nature, we use a qualitative methodology, to identify dimensions of performance evaluation suitable for application to an academic department. Data are collected for the case study of a department of the University of Padua, Italy. After identifying the relations between the four perspective of the balanced scorecard and identifying the strategic maps, the case study proposes a set of goals and measures which are suitable to satisfy the managerial needs of the analyzed department. The paper contributes to the performance evaluation literature in three main ways. It extends the concept of customer by considering a wider systems of stakeholders; it emphasize the strategic role of the financial dimension as a driver for achieving the mission and it highlights the need to coordinate the different stakeholders involved in the enhancement of strategy, from academic and administrative staff, to different types of customers and the community in general.performance measurement, strategy map, balanced scorecard, university, departments

Performance measurement in academic departments: The strategy map approach

This is an Author's Accepted Manuscript of an article published in [include the complete citation information for the final version of the article as published in Public Money and Management in 2011 [copyright Taylor & Francis], available online at: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/09540962.2011.586240."The purpose of the paper is the implementation of the strategic map model to an academic department. We use a qualitative methodology to identify dimensions of performance measurement suitable for application. After identifying the relations between the four perspectives and identifying the strategic maps, the case proposes a set of goals and measures which are suitable to satisfy the managerial needs a public service organization

Board monitoring and internal control system disclosure in different regulatory environments

Article"This article is (c) Emerald Group Publishing and permission has been granted for this version to appear here. Emerald does not grant permission for this article to be further copied/distributed or hosted elsewhere without the express permission from Emerald Group Publishing Limited."Purpose This paper investigates two research questions: Is ICS disclosure, as a monitoring mechanism, associated with the characteristics of the board of directors, particularly the audit committee as the main board committee devoted to the effectiveness of ICS? Does the regulatory environment, particularly the regulation on ICS disclosure as an external governance/monitoring mechanism play a role in shaping the relationship between board monitoring and ICS disclosure and, if so, how? Design/methodology/approachWe study the ICS disclosure of 149 companies listed in four European financial markets (London, Paris, Frankfurt, and Milan), each with its own regulations about ICS disclosure, during a six-year period (2003–2008). Findings Our findings support an inverse association between the extent of ICS disclosure and our proxies for board monitoring. We also find a statistically significant negative relationship between board monitoring and substantial ICS disclosure but no relationship between board monitoring and formal ICS disclosure. Our evidence also shows that the regulatory environment moderates the relationship between board monitoring and ICS disclosure by introducing trade-offs among monitoring mechanisms. Research limitations/implications An important caveat of our research is that we do not provide evidence on the way users can make the availability of substantial information on the effective functioning of ICS a useful tool for their monitoring activity. Practical implications We propose a framework for the analysis of ICS disclosure that overcomes limitations of previous literature that has neglected the importance of the content beyond the extent of ICS disclosure. Through this framework researchers, practitioners and standard setters are able to separate merely descriptive, formal un-useful disclosure (boilerplate information) on the composing elements of the ICS from substantial disclosure regarding the functioning of the ICS (monitoring function). Originality/value We propose a framework for the analysis of ICS disclosure that considers the importance of the content of ICS disclosure, rather than its extent. Through this framework, researchers, practitioners, and standard-setters can separate merely formal, uninformative disclosure (boilerplate information) on the elements of the ICS from substantial disclosure regarding its functioning (monitoring function). We also provide evidence that the relationship between board monitoring and ICS disclosure varies with the content of the information communicated, thus offering guidance for future research not to focus on measuring the extent or quantity of disclosure but on the variety and complexity of the information communicated

Impression management and organizational audiences: The Fiat Group case

Author's accepted manuscript. The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10551-013-1991-9In this paper we investigate whether, and how, corporate management strategically uses disclosure to manage the perceptions of different organizational audiences. In particular, we examine the interactions between the FIAT Group and three of its key organizational audiences—the local press, the international press, and the financial analysts, which are characterized by different levels of salience for the company. We focus on both how management reacts to the optimism level existing within each audience and how the narrative disclosure tone adopted by FIAT influences the ex-post optimism in the local and international press or in the financial analyst community. We investigate the disclosure of the FIAT Group over a 6-year period (2004–2009), during which 70 price-sensitive press releases were published. On the basis of 1,887 (331) news articles published in Italian (international) newspapers and 411 analyst reports, we report evidence of different strategic patterns in the interaction processes between FIAT and its audiences. Our findings also indicate some differences in the way FIAT is affected by, and in turn, affects the sentiment of each audience, thus highlighting that the salience of the stakeholder is an important driver of the adoption of impression management techniques. Taken together, our findings point to issues related to setting the “tone at the top” and potential ethical matters. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2015Italian Ministry of Research (MIUR

Impression management and organizational audiences: The Fiat Group case

Author's accepted manuscript. The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10551-013-1991-9In this paper we investigate whether, and how, corporate management strategically uses disclosure to manage the perceptions of different organizational audiences. In particular, we examine the interactions between the FIAT Group and three of its key organizational audiences—the local press, the international press, and the financial analysts, which are characterized by different levels of salience for the company. We focus on both how management reacts to the optimism level existing within each audience and how the narrative disclosure tone adopted by FIAT influences the ex-post optimism in the local and international press or in the financial analyst community. We investigate the disclosure of the FIAT Group over a 6-year period (2004–2009), during which 70 price-sensitive press releases were published. On the basis of 1,887 (331) news articles published in Italian (international) newspapers and 411 analyst reports, we report evidence of different strategic patterns in the interaction processes between FIAT and its audiences. Our findings also indicate some differences in the way FIAT is affected by, and in turn, affects the sentiment of each audience, thus highlighting that the salience of the stakeholder is an important driver of the adoption of impression management techniques. Taken together, our findings point to issues related to setting the “tone at the top” and potential ethical matters. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2015Italian Ministry of Research (MIUR

Enhancement and obfuscation through the use of graphs in sustainability reports: An international comparison

‘This article is (c) Emerald Group Publishing and permission has been granted for this version to appear here https://ore.exeter.ac.uk/repository/ Emerald does not grant permission for this article to be further copied/distributed or hosted elsewhere without the express permission from Emerald Group Publishing Limited.'Purpose – In this study we investigate the use of graphs in corporate sustainability reports and attempt to determine, first, whether the use of graphs appears to be associated with attempts at impression management, and second, whether differences across three levels of reporting regulatory structure (Leuz, Nanda and Wysocki, 2003) are associated with differences in the level of impression management. Design/methodology/approach - Based on a sample of 120 sustainability reports issued by firms from six different countries, we empirically test for differences in presentation of favorable as opposed to unfavorable items (enhancement) and for differences in the direction of materially distorted graphs (obfuscation). Findings - For the overall sample we find substantial evidence of both enhancement and obfuscation in the graph displays. We also find more limited evidence that impression management differs across companies facing different regulatory structures. Research limitations/implications – We investigate graph use for only one year’s reports and for a sample of large companies from only six different countries. Further, our enhancement findings are not evidence that the companies are necessarily providing misleading information. However, our results show that the way information is being provided in corporate sustainability reports appears to be manipulated by the firms to enhance a positive image and to obfuscate negative trends. The reports may thus be less about increasing corporate accountability across the social and environmental domains than about managing impressions. Hence, it may be beneficial for advocate organizations such as the Global Reporting Initiative to provide additional guidance on “how” information gets portrayed in sustainability reports. Originality/value – Our study expands prior research into corporate manipulation of graphs to the domain of sustainability reporting and adds further evidence that the reporting needs to be carefully assessed

A governance approach to stakeholder engagement in sustainable enterprises – evidence from B Corps

Sustainable enterprises face a risk for which the pressure over financial sustainability “crowds out” their impact mission. Corporate governance mechanisms can play an important role in managing the tensions between the two objectives, by steering and driving stakeholder engagement processes. At the same time, the rise of social media has provided firms with a platform for undertaking stakeholder engagement on a large scale. Therefore, the aim of this study is to examine how the governance mechanisms of sustainable enterprises affect engagement with stakeholders on social media. Specifically, we identify three distinctive mechanisms for a governance approach to stakeholder engagement in sustainable enterprises: the legal purpose beyond profit maximisation, directors’ commitment to purpose, and the adoption of purpose-specific accountability mechanisms. We argue that each of them matters for the extent to which sustainable enterprises engage with stakeholders on social media, as well as the quality of this engagement. By scraping and classifying non-financial tweets posted by 1,074 U.S. B Corps between 2014 and 2018 and those posted by stakeholders towards the firm, we find that the legal and ethical mechanisms are positively related to the quality of engagement while the accountability mechanism is related to both the extent and quality of engagement. Our study sheds light on the implications of governance mechanisms in steering social media stakeholder engagement in sustainable enterprises