Does Innovation Drive Environmental Disclosure? A New Insight into Sustainable Development

Sustainable development is a hot topic in business and the media, and there is a growing demand for reliable environmental disclosure from a wide range of stakeholders. Ethical performance, including social and environmental performance, is actively scrutinized. A firm's stakeholders expect reliable disclosure to correctly assess its performance. Research on the link between environmental disclosure and environmental performance shows mixed results. Both a positive and a negative association have been found. This study reexamines this association by considering environmental innovation as a key determinant of environmental disclosure. We find that environmental performance and environmental innovation jointly determine environmental disclosure. At low levels of environmental performance, innovative firms tend to disclose more than their non‐innovative counterparts to inform stakeholders about their innovation and strategy to obtain an improved environmental performance. This disclosure gap tends to diminish as innovative firms become better environmental performers. The higher levels of environmental disclosure are closely associated with firms' environmental performance for both groups. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

基于可持续发展观下的环境会计信息披露

科学技术的日新月异使全球经济正以前所未有的速度向前发展,为人类创造了大量的财富。但经济快速增长的同时,随之而来的是自然资源的迅速耗竭和环境的严重污染。环境问题已由局部问题上升为人类生存性问题。要真正的让全社会认识到企业对环境的影响程度,必须加强企业对环境造成损害程度科学的披露,这就涉及到环境会计信息披露相关问题。文章从可持续发展观的视角入手,阐述了目前我国环境信息披露的现状和方式以及环境信息披露的局限性,并就目前的局限性提出了改进建议。     

Do board sustainability committees contribute to corporate environmental and social performance? The mediating role of corporate social responsibility strategy

The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of board sustainability committees on environmental and social performance and to examine the mediating effect of corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategy on the relationship between the presence of board sustainability committees and corporate sustainability performance. Using data of U.K. listed firms for the period of 2009–2016, the study employs panel regression analysis and bootstrapping techniques to test study hypotheses. The results suggest that the presence of a sustainability committee improves the effectiveness of CSR strategies. The results also indicate that firms with effective CSR strategies exhibit better environmental and social performance. Further, the empirical results show that the effectiveness of CSR strategy explains the positive relationship between board sustainability committees and corporate environmental and social performance, thus supporting the theoretical framework of the study. The findings of the study shed new light on this research direction and could be of interest to board members, managers, practitioners, investors, policy makers, and regulators that plan to promote sustainability practices and strategies needed for sustainable development.     

关于环境会计信息披露的设想

环境会计是现代会计的一个新兴分支。构建环境会计、实现环境会计信息披露是会计学愈益成熟的结果。是会计工作发挥更大的社会作用和走向可持续发展之路的重要标志。构建环境会计具有坚实的理论和现实基础。由于会计学特别是现代会计理论和方法的快速发展，由于环境经济学和发展经济学的日益成熟，构建环境会计、实现环境会计信息披露已经具备了足够的理论、思想指导和技术方法上的支持。     

Corporate Responsibility Reporting and its Determinants in Comparative Perspective – a Review of the Empirical Literature and a Meta‐analysis

For four decades, reporting on corporate responsibility by businesses has been the subject of empirical research. In the 1970s and 1980s, studies mostly originated from Anglo‐Saxon and Western European countries. During the last two decades research on responsibility reporting was increasingly undertaken in emerging and developing countries as well – always following the reporting practices of the respective businesses. Consequentially, a very large number of studies exist today. Many of these have empirically investigated the determinants of responsibility reporting and examined whether internal factors like size and industry or external factors like stakeholder pressures have an impact on disclosure. Thus, the purpose of the following paper is twofold. First, it seeks to provide an overview of the existing literature in order to facilitate further research. Overall, 186 studies have been examined for the determinants which they considered and have been grouped according to their geographical origin. This provides for an analysis of whether academics from different regions have taken different approaches to the empirical examination of responsibility reporting and if their results differed. The findings show that scholars across regions have taken different paths in empirical research, but indications for a variation in the impact of specific determinants on reporting are weak. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

Corporate social and environmental disclosure as a sustainable development tool provided by board sub-committees: Do women directors play a relevant moderating role?

The aim of this research is to examine the impact of three audit committee characteristics on corporate social and environmental responsibility (CSR) disclosure: the existence of an audit committee, audit committee independence, and audit committee financial expertise. Moreover, this research analyzes the moderating effect of board gender diversity between these audit committees' attributes and CSR reporting. The results of analyzing 13,178 firm-year observations of non-financial companies show that the presence of an audit committee and audit committee financial expertise are positively associated with CSR disclosure. However, a higher proportion of non-executive directors in audit committees has a negative effect on the disclosure of CSR information. These findings suggest that some audit committees' features play an important role in ensuring the reporting of environmental, social, and economic information. Our evidence also indicates that the presence of female directors on boards increases the positive impact of financial expert membership of audit committees on CSR disclosure, while women directors moderate any negative effect of the percentage of independent directors on audit committees on CSR reporting by increasing the latter. In addition, female directors moderate the positive impact of the existence of an audit committee on the disclosure of CSR information by reducing the latter.     

国内外社会责任会计信息披露研究

文章主要介绍了国内外社会责任会计信息披露概况、社会责任会计信息披露的主要内容和常见形式,并在此基础上对社会责任会计信息披露的发展作简单评述。     

关于人类中心主义的伦理辩护

文章首先总结得到人类中心主义的本质,并在与非人类中心主义进行比较分析的过程中,从伦理的角度对人类中心主义的积极方面加以辩护,最后指出其在支持社会可持续发展中的重要作用。