Social Reports Research Articles

Achieving Financial Sustainability in Ghana’s Banking Sector: Is Environmental, Social and Governance Reporting Contributive?

Despite banks not having any significant direct negative impacts on the environment and society, they adopt environmental, social and governance (ESG) accounting. Meanwhile, ESG reporting consumes additional resources and exposes firms’ strategies to competitors. The study employed a legitimacy theory to investigate the impact of ESG reporting on the financial sustainability of banks in Ghana. The study relied on 10 years of annual reports of all the banks in Ghana. The banks’ ESG reporting practices were assessed based on a content analysis method. The financial sustainability was measured based on return on assets (ROA) and net interest margin (NIM). Evidence showed that environmental reporting (ERI) impacted the banks’ NIM and ROA inversely and significantly, whilst governance reporting had a positive but insignificant relationship with NIM and ROA. The result further demonstrated that social reporting (SRI) impacted NIM and ROA positively and significantly. The overall ESG reporting had a negative and significant relationship with the banks’ financial sustainability. Hence, the ESG reporting did not improve the financial sustainability of banks, and banks in Ghana have less of an incentive to report on ESG as opposed to banks in other countries, where such reporting generally makes financial sense.

Exploring the social reporting practices of public schools: survey and cluster analysis of the Italian educational system

ABSTRACTReforms in the Italian educational sector have led schools to become more accountable. Social Reporting (SR) is an effective response to stakeholders’ increasing demand for information and an innovative public accountability tool for Italian Public Schools (IPSs). Using a survey and cluster analysis, our study investigates current awareness and adoption of SR practices to improve the accountability of IPSs. The results show that SR practices are still underused and that IPSs fall into two main groups: “early movers”, which are highly sensitive to this tool and will employ it earlier, and “latecomers”, which show less awareness.

The disclosure of intellectual capital in Italian universities

PurposeUniversities are proper knowledge institutions, since knowledge represents both the input and the output of their activities. Several guidelines have been issued by the European Union and national governments for the promotion of intellectual capital (IC) disclosure by universities. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the amount and nature of voluntary IC disclosure in Italian universities and to gauge the opinion of university managers on IC managing and reporting.Design/methodology/approachThe study applies content analysis and a survey. The content analysis was applied to a group of voluntary social reports (SRs) issued by Italian universities, while the survey was submitted to all top managers of Italian universities.FindingsThe research found a significant amount of IC disclosure in SRs. Also, university top managers demonstrated an awareness of benefits deriving from IC managing and reporting practices, both for decision-making processes and to respond to stakeholder’s needs.Originality/valueThe current paper contributes to IC literature by providing an assessment of IC voluntary disclosure practices in Italian universities, analysing reports other than the annual report (which is the only document media analysed by research so far). Furthermore, while previous research has focussed on IC disclosure, the current study investigates the motivations for IC managing and provides insights into the benefits deriving from IC reporting in universities.

Public social monitoring reports and their effect on a policy programme aimed at addressing the social determinants of health to improve health equity in New Zealand

The important role that monitoring plays in advancing global health is well established. However, the role of social monitoring as a tool for addressing social determinants of health (SDH) and health equity-focused policies remains under-researched. This paper assesses the extent and ways in which New Zealand's (NZ) Social Reports (SRs) supported a SDH- and health equity-oriented policy programme nationally over the 2000-2008 period by documenting the SRs' history and assessing its impact on policies across sectors in government and civil society.We conducted key-informant interviews with five senior policy-makers and an e-mail survey with 24 government and civil society representatives on SRs' history and policy impact. We identified common themes across these data and classified them accordingly to assess the intensity of the reports' use and their impact on SDH- and health equity-focused policies. Bibliometric analyses of government publications and media items were undertaken to empirically assess SRs' impact on government and civil society.SRs in NZ arose out of the role played by government as the "benevolent social welfare planner" and an understanding of the necessity of economic and social security for "progress". The SRs were linked to establishing a government-wide programme aimed at reducing inequalities. They have been used moderately to highly in central and local government and in civil society, both within and outside the health sector, but have neither entered public treasury and economic development departments nor the commercial sector. The SRs have not reached the more universal status of economic indicators. However, they have had some success at raising awareness of, and have stimulated isolated action on, SDH.The NZ case suggests that national-level social monitoring provides a valuable tool for raising awareness of SDH across government and civil society. A number of strategies could improve social reports' effectiveness in stimulating action on SDH.

The Relationships between Annual and Ses Reports: An Empirical Analysis on the Petroleum Companies

This paper is based on the consideration that information asymmetry reduction is not only related to the increase of spread information (Verecchia, 2001; Healy et al., 2001; Peterson et al., 2006) but also to the improvement of clearness of information: the development of an effective communicative behaviour is linked to a good disclosure completeness and to an adequate organisation content of the information between the periodical reports.Empirical research emphasizes the importance of information increase, e.g. information on products, processes, strategies, risks, social-environmental impacts, intangibles assets (Botosan, 1997; Beattie et al., 2002; Beretta et al., 2004). As to this, in the last years focused reports on specific subjects have increasingly been made public: in this sustainability, environmental and social reports (SES) have played a very important part (Mazzoleni, 2004; Brammer et al., 2006). At the same time, content of the annual report has been extended by the introduction of disclosure about social, environmental and sustainability issues (Moneva et al., 2000; Di Piazza et al., 2002).In such a context, scarce attention was paid to the different reports’ integration. More disclosure could be positive for the reduction of information asymmetry but lack of integration between re-ports and information redundancy couldn’t be useful for the readers’ knowledge. SES reports can follow specific guidelines for their drafting; on the contrary the “soft” disclosure in the annual report isn’t regulated by a set of international principles. However, developments in annual report disclosure regulation have been including a part of information naturally located in SES reports. The lacking of coordination between SES guidelines and annul report drafting rules doesn’t lead to a problem solving.By means of a disclosure-scoring analysis (Robb et al., 2001; Vanstraelen et al., 2003; Beattie et al., 2004; Teodori et al., 2006), the aim of this paper is the analysis of the relationship between the content of the annual reports and of the SES reports. To quantify the degree of reports’ completeness and integration a composite unweighted index of disclosure has been established. Reports of year 2005 have been analysed.This paper particularly focuses on SES reports because of their large diffusion. Besides, SES reports include a wide range of information related to the whole company’s activities, investigating it according to social, environmental and financial points of view. To better understand the companies’ communicative behaviour and to improve the accuracy of the results a specific industry is selected. Extractive petroleum companies are analysed because of their relevant environmental and social impact. In addition to this, previous researches demonstrate that petroleum companies have transparent communication behaviour (FASB, 2001; PriceWater-houseCoopers, 2002; Quagli et al., 2005). Finally, there are specific guidelines for their SES reports’ drafting (IPIECA/API, 2005).Companies listed in NYSE, included in S&P 1200 and DJSTOXX 600 Indexes are selected to enable a worldwide disclosure behaviour analysis.The analysis will allow the identification of some communication models and will provide possible response in order to combine the need for more information with the communication tools’ integration.