Strategically-framed environmental disclosure index: a measurement approach of Malaysian public listed companies' corporate environmental reporting practices

Abstract

This study aims to measure the corporate environmental reporting (CER) practices of Malaysian environmentally sensitive public listed companies based on measurement approach named strategically-framed environmental disclosure index. The content analysis technique based on a measurement index related to firm's environmental strategies has been employed. The CER practices of 209 Malaysian environmentally sensitive public listed companies are examined for the years 2010 and 2014. Results suggest that there are three types of firm behaviour in CER in response to institutional pressures: 1) 'negative deviance' (i.e., non-compliance environmental strategies leading to no quality environmental disclosures); 2) 'conformance' (i.e., compliance environmental strategies leading to low quality environmental disclosures); 3) 'positive deviance' (beyond-compliance or proactive environmental strategies leading to high quality environmental disclosures). This index shed light whether the environmental, social and governance (ESG) practice in Malaysian and global context as a deviance or normative behaviour. Moreover, this study identified whether mandatory reporting requirement force firm to actually improve environmental performance concurrently with pro-environmental policies or just as their greenwashing mechanism.