Sustainability Reporting by New Zealand's Local Governments

This study examines New Zealand (NZ) local government's sustainability disclosure during the five years prior to changes in the legislative environment through the introduction of the Environmental Reporting Bill. Local councils appeared to persistently increase their social and environmental disclosure practices in view of the forthcoming Bill. This is consistent with the underpinnings of legitimacy theory in that pending legislation may introduce restrictive policies and rules in the future that are not consistent with current reporting practices. The highest reporting categories were public agency and the environment, which indicates councils’ drive to maintain legitimacy. Further, the results show that local government environmental reporting focused on non‐monetary, and to a lesser extent monetary, information. In the absence of mandatory guidelines, the results also indicate that NZ local councils have voluntarily reported sustainability information consistent with GRI indicators.     

企业可持续发展报告研究述评--基于GRI《可持续发展报告指南》发布后的文献

随着全球报告倡议组织（GRI）的成立及其《可持续发展报告指南》的发布与改进,可持续发展报告在全球范围内得到广泛的推行。现有文献对企业可持续发展报告的研究主要集中在四个方面：可持续发展报告的发展历程、现状与趋势,可持续发展报告评价指标体系的构建与实证研究,GRI指南在我国的应用情况以及可持续发展报告带来的经济后果。现有研究大多是对可持续发展报告评价指标体系与影响公司行为的方式进行理论分析,未来研究方向将集中在企业可持续发展报告的评价以及运用实证方法检验公司行为与可持续发展报告的披露两者之间的关系上。     

Editorial

This article analyses the ways that Spanish public water companies communicate sustainability information to their stakeholders and explores whether distinctive and more progressive accountability is possible in the public sector in comparison with private sector organizations. Two distinct activities are identified in sustainable accountability: public organizations are engaged in informal as well as formal reporting activity, and their reporting seems to be coupled with real organizational strategies and operational activities.     

The Role and Current Status of IFRS in the Completion of National Accounting Rules – Evidence from Turkey

Abstract

As it is not a member of the European Union, Turkey has not yet adopted EU accounting directives by law. Instead, Turkish standard setting authority adopted International Financial Reporting Standards for entities that have public accountability and has recently prepared the draft Turkish financial reporting standard for non-publicly accountable entities that are subject to independent audit: Framework for Local Financial Reporting. This national standard is influenced by European accounting directive 2013/34, international financial reporting practices and UK experience in addition to national accounting rules.     

A Survey of Sustainability Reporting Practices of Australian Reporting Entities

This study examines the nature and extent of sustainability reporting practices in the various reporting media used by companies listed on the ASX (annual reports, discrete reports and websites). The sustainability reporting practices of the sample are compared with key indicators outlined in the GRI framework. The annual report is found to be the least valuable source of information on corporate sustainability in terms of the number of indicators observed and the diversity of the information provided. The discrete reports and websites provide greater levels of information on sustainability; however the overall levels of disclosure are generally low.     

Sustainability accounting regulation in Spanish public sector organizations

In 2011, the Spanish government made sustainability accounting mandatory for public sector organizations. This paper documents why, despite the new legislation, the quantity and quality of sustainability accounting practices remains low.     

从可持续发展视角谈“整合报告”对企业价值的贡献

＂整合报告＂代表了企业报告发展的最新趋势。2010年8月,全球报告倡议组织（GRI）与威尔士王子可持续会计项目（A4S）联合成立了国际整合报告委员会（IIRC）,便旨在推动全球建立统一的整合报告框架,该框架建议企业提供一份将财务、环境、社会责任和治理信息经整合的报告,由此掀起了一场关注整合报告的热潮。本文另辟蹊径,从可持续发展理论出发,诠释了整合报告与企业价值创造和可持续发展之间的传导问题。     

How do medical managers strategize? A strategy-as-practice perspective

ABSTRACT

Strategic planning (SP) is a widely-used practice within public sector organizations. However, SP does not only take place in strategy workshops and senior management levels. This paper explores how medical managers of English hospitals ‘do’ SP in their clinical directorates. The authors investigate the practices, the usage of strategy tools and the implications of medical managers’ strategizing. The paper argues that what makes financial sense to medical managers strategizing in the local circumstances of their directorates does not always equate to value for patients, the hospital or for the public sector as a whole.     

Do foreign institutional investors drive corporate social responsibility? Evidence from listed firms in China

This paper investigates the effect of qualified foreign institutional investors (QFIIs) on corporate social responsibility (CSR) within the context of listed firms in China. We find that QFIIs offer an incisive channel for improving socially responsible practices. In addition, we find that firms with QFIIs are more likely to comply with the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) guidelines, and that their sustainability reports tend to be longer. We also find that this positive effect is more pronounced in firms with low initial CSR scores than those with high CSR scores at the time when QFIIs enter the sample. Our empirical evidence further confirms that this positive impact is driven by QFIIs from countries with high social awareness, or QFIIs from geographically distant countries, consistent with their motives, and is linked to the ownership of QFIIs, especially when the QFII is among the top ten of the largest shareholders. Finally, our extended analysis reveals that the increase in CSR performance associated with the presence of QFIIs results in greater firm performance and easier access to finance.     

New development: Alternative reporting formats: a panacea for accountability dilemmas?

ABSTRACT

The need for accountability has given rise to new formats of reporting for public sector organizations. This article discusses the relative strengths and weaknesses of the main formats and concludes with a proposal for the adoption of an ‘Integrated Popular Report’ (IPR) to connect public sector organizations with ordinary people and encourage democratic participation in decision-making.     

Governance and Accountability: A Role for Social Accounts in the Sustainable School

Alongside formal systems of governance in secondary education there are important informal relationships of accountability among key stakeholders, organized around voluntary obligation in the public interest. Developing these accountabilities enhances sustainability. This article argues that social accounting, when firmly rooted in the values of the school community, can be a valuable tool in developing accountability and a practical means of enhancing sustainability.     

Adoption of activity management practices in public sector organizations

This paper examines the extent to which activity management practices are adopted by Australian public sector organizations at each of Gosselin's (1997) levels of Activity Analysis, Activity Cost Analysis, and Activity‐based Costing. The present paper replicates Baird et al. (2004), thereby enabling a comparison of the extent of adoption of activity management in the public sector with that reported in the private sector in Baird et al. (2004). The results reveal that the adoption of higher level activity management practices (Activity Cost Analysis and Activity‐based Costing) is less prevalent in public sector organizations, whereas they adopt Activity Analysis to the same extent as the private sector.     

Accountability for performance in English and Scottish fire and rescue services from 2010 to 2016

ABSTRACT

Using evidence from English and Scottish fire and rescue services from 2010 to 2016, this paper shows how divergent performance management regimes can affect public accountability. Performance management regimes enable agencies and the public to hold public sector organizations accountable by facilitating evaluation of their accomplishments. However, local as opposed to central, control over performance management can have quite different implications for public accountability.     

European firms’ corporate biodiversity disclosures and board gender diversity from 2002 to 2016

We examine how board gender diversity is associated with biodiversity disclosures of a firm, and whether the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) and the EU biodiversity strategy reinforce this relationship. Using institutional theory and resource dependency theory, our sample comprises 4013 firm-year observations from European corporations covering data from 2002 to 2016. We use panel regressions with country, time and industry dummy variables to analyse the disclosure of biodiversity initiatives (DBI) and logit regressions to explain biodiversity impact assessment (BIA). We find that board gender diversity is positively associated with the DBI and BIA of a firm, and that the GRI framework and the EU biodiversity strategy positively moderate this relationship. Moreover, the GRI framework and the EU strategic plan show positive relationship with the DBI, rather than BIA. Altogether, our evidence suggests that corporate boards with a higher proportion of female directors are more sensitive to the concerns of institutional pressures and respond to those concerns by increasing corporate biodiversity disclosures. Overall, we find that firms tend to comply with the GRI framework and the EU 2020 strategy by undertaking symbolic biodiversity disclosures, rather than providing a comprehensive disclosure of their impacts on biodiversity.     

Technologies of government in public sector's networks: In search of cooperation through management control innovations

In recent years, the public sector has been the subject of a thorough reassessment in a significant number of countries. During this process of modernization, issues such as inter-organizational collaboration and managerial innovation have been progressively placed at the forefront of practice and research. In particular, a number of countries have recently re-organized their public sectors around more or less formalized networks or hybrid inter-organizational forms, which are often led by a regulatory body and governed by a cooperation agreement. The literature on inter-organizational relationships in the public sector has evolved alongside the development of such cooperation agreements and innovative forms of organizing. Nevertheless, despite the fact that networks formed by public organizations, not-for-profit organizations, and private firms provide important services to their relevant communities, limited attention has been dedicated to studying the role of management control practices within inter-organizational relationships in public organizations. This is an important gap in the existing literature that this Special Issue intends to address. For this reason, and most importantly because public sector forms of inter-organizational collaborations are likely to differ significantly from those observed in the private sector, in the first part of this Editorial we draw attention to some of the themes that characterize the management and control of inter-organizational relations in the domain of public administration. Next, we introduce the six papers which comprise this Special Issue, and we briefly illustrate how each of them enhances our understanding of the role of control systems within public sector networks. Building on the empirical evidence and theoretical arguments offered by these studies, and after a brief review on the possible alternative ways of conceptualizing the process of adopting new management practices, we point to the further research that needs to be done if we are to understand the role that management control practices play in public sector networks. In particular, we suggest that there is a need to look inside management control practices, to explore what these practices are and, how and why they enable the cooperative “ideal” to become real, as well as to stimulate or hinder opportunities for public sector managerial innovation. It is concluded that there are a number of issues yet to be explored if we are to deepen our understanding of the formal and informal mechanisms of control which are the active elements of the so-called “regulatory hybrids” in the public sector.     

The State of Sustainability in China

China has experienced remarkable economic growth since the reforms of Deng Xiaoping in the late 1970s. This growth has come at a significant environmental and social cost, raising the question of whether the country needs to focus more on sustainable development than on economic growth for its own sake. Moreover, there is growing recognition in China that more attention needs to be paid to achieving environmental and social as well as economic goals. This recognition has come in the form of changes in public policy, in pronouncements by Party leaders, and in the research and writings of academics, think tanks, and industry associations. As the authors also point out, sustainable development on a global scale is now as dependent on the actions of large corporations as on government policies. And one way of assessing China's commitment to sustainability is to compare the behavior of its largest 100 companies to that of the largest 100 corporations in the United States. In making this comparison, the authors use two, admittedly imperfect, indicators of sustainability that suggest that the extent of the commitment to sustainability is roughly comparable in both countries. The first of the two indicators is membership in the UN Global Compact. On that score, the authors report that exactly 15 of the top 100 companies in both China and the U.S. have formally endorsed its ten principles regarding human rights, labor, the environment, and anticorruption. The second indicator is the percentage of the largest 100 companies that produce a sustainability report based on the guidelines of the Global Reporting Initiative. Using that measure, the authors report that about half of China's largest companies produce a sustainability report based on the GRI guidelines. Although that percentage is smaller than the two‐thirds of U.S. companies that now provide such reports, the authors are encouraged by the trend, and by the pattern of adoption in which larger companies are clearly leading way.     

Sustainability adrift: An evaluation of the credibility of sustainability information disclosed by public organizations

This article aims to evaluate the credibility of information disclosed by public organizations in terms of sustainable development. It focuses on an under-studied aspect in the sustainability reporting literature—namely, the factors that may affect the credibility of disclosure practices. The study is based on a qualitative analysis of the sustainable development content of annual management reports disclosed by 113 ministries and public bodies in the province of Quebec, Canada. The findings shed more light on the main factors that affect the credibility of the information disclosed therein, particularly in terms of lack of transparency and flawed monitoring mechanisms.     

Fulfilling its promise? Strategic public procurement and the impact of equality considerations on employers’ behaviour in Scotland

ABSTRACT

Public administration is an important force influencing equality in today’s society. Like budgetary choices, public procurement has increasingly gained attention as a means to promote equality. Yet, there are important gaps in knowledge, especially regarding how equality requirements in public procurement affect company behaviour. This paper sheds first light on the impact strategic public procurement has on employers’ behaviour. Based on empirical research, this paper highlights that companies perceive a limited prevalence of equality stipulations in Scottish public procurement practices and raises doubts about the impact of public procurement practices to create a successful business case for equality.     

New development: ‘Healing at a distance’—telemedicine and COVID-19

ABSTRACT

In extreme circumstances such as pandemics, the presence of patients in hospital emergency departments becomes untenable. Healthcare professionals and organizations worldwide are leaning on technology as a crucial ally to deal with the COVID-19 outbreak. This article focuses on the positive impact of telemedicine for helping service provision, from enabling virtual triage to mitigating the negative psychological effects of social isolation. The authors discuss the challenges and opportunities to telemedicine practices.