Level of sustainability reporting of Malaysian IPO companies.

Abstract

This paper aims to determine the level of sustainability reporting (SR) among Malaysian initial public offering (IPO) companies. Due to a lack of awareness about SR and its dimensions, these aspects have not been receiving the necessary push from the public domain. This study is exploratory in nature. Secondary data were used by conducting content analysis of the annual reports of 139 sampled IPO companies listed on Bursa Malaysia from 2007 to 2017. Data were analysed using descriptive statistics, with extent and quality being used as measures of SR. The results demonstrated gradual improvements of the extent and quality of SR among Malaysian IPO companies. The overall extent of SR was 20.70%, with employee disclosure scoring the highest (34.87%), followed by society disclosure (32.77%), environmental disclosure (22.48%), and finally product disclosure (9.88%). The overall quality of SR was 32.04%, with society disclosure scoring the highest (36.09%), followed by employee disclosure (34.13%), environmental disclosure (20.28%), and finally product disclosure (9.50%). SR dimensions, namely society, environmental, employee, and product received little interest from most of the IPO companies. This study proposes that additional studies can be conducted to investigate SR among IPO companies.