| Pub. Date | : April, 2023 |
|---|---|
| Product Name | : The IUP Journal of Accounting Research and Audit Practices |
| Product Type | : Article |
| Product Code | : IJARAP020423 |
| Author Name | : Chanpreet Kaur, Arshi Barin and Ritu Sapra |
| Availability | : YES |
| Subject/Domain | : Finance |
| Download Format | : PDF Format |
| No. of Pages | : 20 |
The changing business environment, following the climatic and resource distress caused by corporate houses that use a purely profit-making model, demands that the benefits and costs generated by an organization in the realm of their operations are scrutinized. Sustainability disclosures are explored using content analysis procedure. It has been found that the highest disclosed quality is that of community disclosures, followed by environmental, customer and employee-related disclosures. It has been found that the audit committee is an important dimension of governance, and an attempt has been made to study the various attributes of Audit Committees (AC) and their impact on the quality of disclosures. The analysis is based on three different industries, namely, pharmaceutical, automobiles, and fast-moving consumer goods. The data for the disclosures and AC attributes, such as size of the AC, number of independent members, number of meetings, and quorum of meetings are taken from the annual reports and sustainability reports of the companies. In order to assess the quality and manner of the occurrence of disclosures, descriptive analysis, using simple averages, frequencies, mode, and ranking, is carried out, in addition to content analysis. Regression Analysis is used to find out the relationship between social disclosure and AC attributes. The results reveal that maximum disclosures are related to community aspects and that there is an unfavorable impact of AC attributes on social disclosures.
Sustainability disclosure, whereby a company reports its economic, sustainable and
environmental practices, policies and performance has gone beyond a superficial treatment in
annual reports.
Nowadays, stakeholders are keen not just about companies' financial matters but are also
increasingly seeking disclosures on environmental and sustainable practices. Various national
and international bodies provide guidance on reporting of nonfinancial matters. These include
the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI, 2006), (SIGMA Guidelines, 2008), SEBI guidelines and
non-voluntary guidelines.