SUSTAINABILITY AND CORPORATE REPORTING: A REVIEW ON ENVIRONMENTAL AND SOCIAL ACCOUNTING DISCLOSURE

Abstract

In the past, companies generally assumed that their corporate responsibility was limited to reporting of financial information only. Qualitative issues of social and environmental accounting were generally not reported or briefly stated. However, the scenario has changed, and the reporting of non-financial information is now growing in significance as companies and stakeholders realize that social and environmental matters eventually affect their sustainability. The recent interest in sustainability reporting is consistent with the growing sensitivity of our society to understand and be informed of how companies manage these issues in their operations. The literature on accounting disclosure is very rich and addresses a wide range of disclosure related issues such as corporate disclosure practices, type and level of disclosure, as well as factors affecting the disclosure. Past studies have identified the impact of organizational and economic factors on the disclosure level which can be grouped into three categories. The first examines the characteristics of companies, the second studies the governance attributes and the third looks at companies’ ownership structure as determinants of the disclosure. This article provides a review of recent literature on sustainability disclosures and examines the gap in the studies of voluntary disclosures in different countries, and industries. The results reveal a number of similarities as well as differences. This study contributes to the literature by highlighting the complexity of the accounting disclosure issues in corporate reporting and provides a direction for future research on the determinants of corporate sustainability reporting.