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One of the major sources of information for investors and other stakeholders on success in doing business is corporate reporting presented by the companies themselves. Such a reporting significantly facilitates a dialogue between western stakeholders and companies which plan to enter world markets. It enables increasing not only the value of the business a company runs, but also the sales volume as well. A corporate report reveals information on the priorities and values of the company in the sphere of sustainable development and provides data on the results of its impact on the economic, social, and ecological sphere. A company publishing such a report can claim to be ready to develop a dialogue with society and aims toward accommodating stakeholders’ interests (of a state, clients, employees, shareholders, and investors) in the framework of social partnership.

Introduction: In the context of globalisation processes, the necessity to create appropriate information support for management decisions at various levels becomes increasingly important: at the international, national and enterprise levels. The source of such data is financial reporting. The last leads to increase attention from key users (investors, lenders, other users) to the reliability and quality of financial reporting data. The study of scientific literature and best foreign practices made it possible to identify problems of the theoretical, organisational and methodological background of preparing high-quality financial statements and their assessment, particularly the lack of a unified interpretation of the financial reporting quality concept. The necessity to identify a theoretical basis for assessing financial reporting quality has led to the relevance of this study.

Aim: Scientific substantiation and improvement of theoretical provisions of methodology development for financial reporting quality assessment.

Methods used within the study are the following: Analysis, synthesis, operational approach, bibliographic analysis, generalisation.

Findings: The application of an operational approach to the formulation of the definition of financial reporting quality has made it possible to create the basis for its assessment. This approach involves descriptions of the principles of clarity and uniformity. The authors define the concept of ‘financial reporting quality’, formulating the theoretical principles for financial reporting assessment as the process of establishing compliance of financial statements with a specific list of qualitative characteristics.

Web‐based corporate reporting has emerged as a new mode of communication between companies and stakeholders. The purpose of this research is to assess the perception of various stakeholders on adequacy, usefulness and the future of web‐based corporate reporting.

A questionnaire was administered to 255 respondents and factor analysis was applied to analyse the data.

Factor analysis identified eight factors, which describe stakeholders’ perceptions about web‐based corporate reporting. These include usefulness of web reporting, future prospects, legal acceptability, adequacy of information, usefulness for investment decision, standardisation of content, mandatory requirement and substitute for traditional reporting.

The research findings will guide companies, regulators and service providers to deliver better information to stakeholders through disclosures on corporate websites.

The paper provides an insight into stakeholders’ beliefs and perceptions with respect to web reporting practices by companies and the future of these practices.

While the main purpose of reporting – e.g. reporting for taxes – is to gauge the economic state of a company, the fact that reporting is done at pre-determined dates distorts the reporting results. For example, to create a larger impression of their productivity, companies fire temporary workers before the reporting date and re-hire then right away. The purpose of this study is to decide how to avoid such distortion.

This study aims to come up with a solution which is applicable for all possible reasonable optimality criteria. Thus, a general formalism for describing and analyzing all such criteria is used.

This study shows that most distortion problems will disappear if the fixed pre-determined reporting dates are replaced with individualized random reporting dates. This study also shows that for all reasonable optimality criteria, the optimal way to assign reporting dates is to do it uniformly.

This study shows that for all reasonable optimality criteria, the optimal way to assign reporting dates is to do it uniformly.

It is found that the individualized random tax reporting dates would be beneficial for economy.

It is found that the individualized random tax reporting dates would be beneficial for society as a whole.

This study proposes a new idea of replacing the fixed pre-determining reporting dates with randomized ones. On the informal level, this idea may have been proposed earlier, but what is completely new is our analysis of which randomization of reporting dates is the best for economy: it turns out that under all reasonable optimality criteria, uniform randomization works the best.

Global climate change has become a major societal issue providing the impetus for governments to legislate policy in order to manage and mitigate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. To assess whether the use of biomass can reduce GHG emissions requires accounting, reporting and assurance methods and procedures. The purpose of this paper is to illustrate key challenges of GHG reporting and assurance with the example of the Australian framework.

This viewpoint, discussing GHG emissions reporting and assurance, critically analyses some of the key issues arising in practice, including the current state of organizations' systems and controls, the changing nature of governance structures as well as measurement challenges being experienced by companies regarding GHG reporting.

The paper finds that more rigorous governance frameworks and management systems are likely to evolve around GHG reporting given the recent introduction of the carbon pricing mechanism and its nexus to companies' financial performance as well as increased risks associated with inaccurate reporting.

The paper contains an overview of the current regulatory environment and key issues surrounding GHG reporting and assurance.

The management of GHG‐related issues has significant implications for organisations. The paper provides both practitioner and academic perspectives on the current issues and challenges within the GHG reporting context.

This chapter reviews the context of sustainability reporting law and regulations worldwide. Based on the discussion, a conceptual framework has been developed to investigate the moderating role of sustainability reporting law (SRL) on the relationship between sustainability reporting and firm's performance. The findings reveal that the inclusion of SRL as a moderating variable positively affects the relationships between the E, S and G components and operational performance.

The purpose of this study is to analyse the impact of corporate attributes like a company’s profitability, size, age, leverage and board size on companies’ sustainability reporting as measured through India’s new business responsibility and sustainability reporting (BRSR) framework.

A random sample of 130 companies was taken from the top 1,000 listed companies on the National Stock Exchange. Sequential mixed methods research approach was used to prepare a sustainability quality index. Then, a hierarchical multiple regression analysis was performed to examine the impact on the quality of reporting by Indian companies.

Interestingly, the analysis revealed that traditional metrics like age, profitability, board size and leverage did not have significant associations with reporting quality. Rather, the size of a company in terms of market capitalisation was found to have a strong positive impact on sustainability reporting.

This was a cross-sectional study, as time series data for BRSR reporting is not yet available. Also, only five parameters were taken for analysis. Lastly, subjective judgment in content analysis may be involved.

This suggests that only larger companies in India are prioritising sustainability reporting over smaller ones. It affirms the legitimacy and stakeholder theory in the Indian context.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is one of the first endeavours to assess the efficacy of the new Indian BRSR framework and test its primary objectives. Furthermore, significant implications have been given for managers to catalyse and reinforce the sustainability momentum down the lane across companies of all sizes in India.

This study aims to investigate whether there is a relationship between the religiosity levels of chairpersons’ hometowns and the financial reporting quality of companies.

Using a unique hand-collected data set obtained from various sources, the authors use ordinary least squares and logistic regressions to test the hypotheses and further implement various methods to address potential issues such as omitted variables, reverse causality and selection bias problems. In addition, the authors control for the religiosity level of chief executive officers’ (CEOs) hometowns. Finally, the authors divide the sample into two subsamples – companies with strong corporate governance and companies with weak corporate governance – to investigate the effect of chairpersons’ hometown religiosity on financial reporting quality under strong or weak corporate governance.

The findings demonstrate that companies with chairpersons from religious hometowns produce high-quality financial reports. Additional tests, such as the Heckman selection model and instrument variable regression, confirm the robustness of the main results. Controlling for the religiosity level of the CEO’s hometown yields consistent findings with the main results. Finally, additional results indicate that the religiosity levels of chairpersons’ hometowns play a significant role in enhancing financial reporting quality in companies with weak corporate governance.

Companies should consider appointing board members or chairpersons from more religious hometowns, as the empirical results of this study support the positive effects of chairpersons’ hometown religiosity on financial reporting quality.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the current study is among the first to demonstrate the relationship between the religiosity level of the chairpersons’ hometown and the financial reporting quality of companies. The study introduces unique hometown religiosity proxies and controls for various variables related to corporate governance, chairperson attributes, company characteristics, and audit firm characteristics.

The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, it identifies whether sustainability reporting has become an institutionalized cultural norm in the daily routines and organizational practices of Spanish public hospitals. Second, it finds out why sustainability reporting has become (or not) an institutionalized norm in the Spanish public hospital field.

To accomplish the research aims, the authors have adopted a qualitative method approach by combining two main data sources: (1) a documentary analysis of reports published by 60 Spanish public hospitals that consistently maintained their commitment to this activity over the past 10 years; and (2) a semi-structured interview with seven hospital managers and with seven participants from professional organizations.

The authors have found that sustainability reporting has not become an institutionalized practice in the Spanish public hospital setting. Based on the notion of normativity, the findings indicate that the institutional conditions that support the emergence of a norm are not met (Bebbington et al., 2012). In particular, the lack of a coherent normative framework, the absence of congruence with previous similar practices and the lack of clarity in the norm explain why a reporting norm has not emerged. Currently, the societal context has not developed an appropriate discourse around the development of sustainability reporting in the Spanish public sector.

The contribution of this research is double: (1) From a practical level, this paper contributes to the accounting literature by analyzing the development of sustainability reporting practices in the public sector; (2) According to the notion of normativity, the novelty of this paper is to explore whether a sustainability reporting norm emerges in Spanish public hospitals.

This investigation highlights the discrepancies in sustainability reporting practices, and their implications for sustainable service.

A comparative analysis methodology was employed, examining sustainability reports from similarly situated companies, specifically PepsiCo and Coca-Cola and The Home Depot, Lowe’s and HomePro. This approach was chosen to uncover variances in sustainability reporting and practices within these sectors using the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) guidelines which all four firms followed in their sustainability reports.

The study reveals significant disparities in how companies within the same industry apply SASB guidelines. These inconsistencies highlight a broader issue of non-standardization in sustainability reporting, leading to challenges in effectively evaluating the relative performance of companies in the same sector.

The findings suggest managers must prioritize standardized and transparent sustainability reporting to build stakeholder acceptance and trust.

This paper contributes to the existing literature by providing a detailed comparison of sustainability practices in two distinct industry sectors. It offers new insights into the challenges and importance of standardizing sustainability reporting and the potential impact on stakeholders.