Board Governance and Sustainability Disclosure – A Romanian Insight

Abstract

This paper examines the corporate governance and sustainability disclosure and investigates the existing anchor between sustainability disclosure and corporate governance in Romanian companies. The topic provides a generous field of study because of the novelty of sustainable reporting for the Romanian companies and need for robust, consolidated corporate governance. The study’s sample includes listed and non-listed companies operating in the oil, transportation, chemistry and pharmaceutical industries. Annual reports, comply-or-explain declarations and stand-alone sustainability reports of the companies were analyzed on a time frame of three years aiming at measure the quality of sustainability disclosures and investigate the correlations between board governance and sustainability disclosure. The study emphasized that the companies opted mainly to integrate sustainable reporting in the annual management report. The independent reports on sustainability are more rigorous and better aligned to the Romanian framework, then the information integrated into the annual management reports. Improved disclosure is needed on the main risks with severe impacts, policies regarding specific aspects of sustainability, key performance indicators relevant to particular businesses. The sustainability reporting is more focus on soft disclosure items. Companies with larger board size and a higher number of board meetings registered higher disclosure in sustainability reporting. Robust corporate governance is imperative for Romanian companies because they are facing drastic changes in all aspects of their activity. A new rethink approach is needed from the sustainability perspective aiming at reshaping the entire processes starting with a long-term strategy, business models, risk and data management and processing.