The European Commission’s draft of the new Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) is intended to extend European sustainability reporting standards to cover all companies falling under the scope of the directive. Based on a comprehensive evaluation of non-financial statements of...

Die integrierte Berichterstattung soll finanzielle und strategische Aspekte entsprechend mit relevanten Nachhaltigkeitsthemen verknüpfen. Durch eine damit einhergehende, verbesserte Datengrundlage und Kommunikation zwischen verschiedenen Abteilungen können so ökologisch nachhaltigere...

Arguably the most important step in the measurement and reporting of an organization’s performance is completion of a materiality determination beforehand. At base, materiality determinations address the all-important question of what the scope and criteria for analysis must be in each case,...

Management and disclosure of environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues have received substantial interest over the last decade. In this paper, we outline a framework of how ESG issues become financially material, affecting corporate profitability and valuation. We argue that...

The relationship between sustainability performance and sustainability disclosure remains ambiguous, both theoretically and empirically. Voluntary disclosure theory would suggest that the relationship should be positive, whereas legitimacy theory points toward a negative relationship. However,...

This paper investigates the divergence of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) ratings. Based on data from six prominent rating agencies - namely, KLD (MSCI Stats), Sustainalytics, Vigeo Eiris (Moody's), RobecoSAM (SP Global), Asset4 (Refinitiv), and MSCI IVA- we decompose the divergence...