This study investigates the link between board independence and the quality of community disclosures in annual reports. Using content analysis and a panel dataset from the UK FTSE 350 companies, the results show a statistically significant relationship between board independence, measured by...

The paper reports the findings of a multi-jurisdictional study on companies' reporting of diversity practices at board level and below. It involved a review of the 2009, 2010 and 2011 annual reports of listed companies in Australia, Belgium, Norway, Spain and the UK. Some of the questions...

We study the impact on firm valuation of a novel exogenous shock to environmental, social, and governance (ESG) data that affects how firms’ corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance is measured. Our analysis reveals that firms that get their CSR ratings artificially boosted by a...

Beyond their legal obligations, corporations globally are considering human rights issues in their management policies and practices for their responsible business conduct regarding social sustainability. This rationale applies to corporate responsibility, in which corporations are active...

We examine misreporting of gender pay gap information. Beginning in 2017, the UK government mandated that UK employers report gender employment ratios and pay gaps. The mandate does not include an audit requirement and has received little regulatory enforcement. Nonetheless, supporters of the...

Putting an end to the “earnings game” requires that CEOs reclaim the initiative by avoiding earnings guidance and managing expectations in such a way that their stocks trade reasonably close to their intrinsic value. In place of earnings forecasts, management should provide information about...

This paper explores the relationship between disclosing corporate targets and value creation. Our empirical results show the value relevance of voluntarily disclosing a low number of targets, whereas there is a clear additional positive effect of disclosing exactly one corporate target in the...

Much of the discussion of voluntary disclosure of external capital in annual reports entails only limited examination of signals for capital accumulation. Using the method of content analysis, this paper examines practices regarding signalling for disclosure of external capital, the most...

This paper investigates the influences of stakeholders' power and corporate characteristics on social and environmental disclosure practices of socially responsible Chinese listed firms identified by a social responsibility ranking list. A stakeholder-driven, three-dimensional social and...

Evidence suggests that managers have an incentive to keep information opaque with the market when negotiating with employees who can extract above-market rents from the firm. We argue that employee ownership should mitigate this incentive to extract above-market rents and, in turn, alleviate the...