Exploring the quantity and quality of occupational health and safety disclosure among listed manufacturing companies: Evidence from Pakistan, a lower-middle income country

Abstract

Providing a safe and healthy work environment is a significant challenge for firms operating in today's dynamic and competitive world. Since firms voluntarily report their occupational health and safety (OHS)performance through annual or sustainability report; there is often variation in thequality of disclosure, especially in lower middle-income countries such as Pakistan.The current study considered manufacturing companies listed at Pakistan Stock Exchange. Due to the scant literature in Pakistan, the study adopted an exploratory mixed design. Data was gathered from the annual reports of 181 manufacturing firms between 2018 and 2019.Due to a lack of accounting methodology to assess the quality and quantity of occupational health and safety disclosure (OHSD), this study used content analysis, benchmarking technique and statistical analysis. The findingsrevealinadequate OHS disclosure as only three companies reported OHS information according to the GRI indicators. Furthermore,compared with other aspects of OHS, the results reveal that‘occupational safety’ is widely reported. Through the benchmarking technique, the quality assessed showed poor OHSD as the accountability indexscores in 2018 and 2019 were 3.22 and 3.44, respectively, both of which are lower than the benchmark score (16.5). The statistical results reveal differences in disclosure of company-specific factors. Such methodology highlights to focus on GRI standards and can help managers and stakeholders assess the effectiveness of the OHS management practices adopted by firms. This research paper proposes an assessment methodology to examine OHS disclosure information in corporate annual reports by analyzing subjective and objective data specific to companies.