Management summary research study „Towards comprehensive corporate sustainability reporting: an empirical study of factors influencing ESG disclosures of large Czech companies“

The main goal of the study was to examine which attributes of large Czech companies are associated with more comprehensive ESG reporting. Our study of 100 largest Czech companies found that even within this subgroup of firms, it is true that larger and more profitable companies tend to disclose more ESG related information. It is argued that this can be caused by the need of companies to prove their legitimacy to Society. Surprisingly, authors did not observe any relationship between board of directors attributes and ESG dislcosures; however, it could be argued that this lack of evidence might be caused by the sheer underepresentation of certain social groups in the boards, such as female and foreign directors. Moreover, as expected based on prior research, a significant differences in the comprehensivness of ESG reporting was observed across industries. The industries with more significant societal and environmental footprint tend to disclose more ESG related information. The practical implications of the study point out to the fact that companies should be prepared to grow their ESG reporting as they grow their business to signal their legitimacy to the Society.

Target groups of stakeholders: Academia, managers

Citation: Balogh, I., Srivastava, M., & Tyll, L. (2022). Towards comprehensive corporate sustainability reporting: an empirical study of factors influencing ESG disclosures of large Czech companies. Society and Business Review.

Source: https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/SBR-07-2021-0114/full/html