1,720,996 research outputs found
Measuring csr disclosure when assessing stock market effects
No full textA growing number of studies are using a dichotomous variable indicating the presence of a standalone CSR report to capture impacts of CSR disclosure. Our concern is that, without considering differences in the information provided, such an approach could lead to incorrect inferences regarding those impacts. We extend prior research by examining whether, similar to differences in environmental disclosure, the mere presence of a standalone CSR report also mitigates negative market reactions at times of regulatory cost exposure. We focus on the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi disaster and a sample of international utilities with nuclear power generation. Controlling for other factors related to social and regulatory cost exposures, we find only the environmental disclosures appear to reduce negative market effects. We argue that, in exploring the impacts of CSR disclosure, researchers need to carefully consider, beyond just the presence of a CSR report, differences in the extent of information being provided
Does assurance on CSR reporting enhance environmental reputation? An examination in the U.S. context
No full textCreating Legitimacy for Sustainability Assurance Practices: Evidence from Sustainability Restatements
No full textThis study examines sustainability reporting assurance (SRA) provider use of sustainability restatements as a means to create legitimacy in the developing SRA market. In comparison to financial data, mistakes in sustainability reporting are more likely to be made and less likely to be discovered prior to reporting. A lack of clear reporting standards and ambiguous SRA guidelines create a setting where providers can use restatements in an attempt to demonstrate both a problem in sustainability reporting and assurance as the solution to that issue. Based on a sample of US firms from 2010 to 2014, we find that SRA is associated with an increased likelihood of sustainability restatements, that the association is stronger for error restatements than for restatements due to methodological updates, and that SRA is significantly associated with the disclosure of quantitatively non-material restatements. We also document differences in these relations across provider type, with only consultant assurance significantly associated with methodological restatements and restatements of a non-material amount. Our findings support differences between sustainability report restatements and financial restatements, and provide evidence in support of our argument that assurance providers may be using restatements in an attempt to expand market share in a new professional space
Enhancement and obfuscation through the use of graphs in sustainability reports: An international comparison
No full text‘This article is (c) Emerald Group Publishing and permission has been granted for this version to appear here https://ore.exeter.ac.uk/repository/ Emerald does not grant permission for this article to be further copied/distributed or hosted elsewhere without the express permission from Emerald Group Publishing Limited.'Purpose – In this study we investigate the use of graphs in corporate sustainability
reports and attempt to determine, first, whether the use of graphs appears to be associated
with attempts at impression management, and second, whether differences across three
levels of reporting regulatory structure (Leuz, Nanda and Wysocki, 2003) are associated
with differences in the level of impression management.
Design/methodology/approach - Based on a sample of 120 sustainability reports issued
by firms from six different countries, we empirically test for differences in presentation
of favorable as opposed to unfavorable items (enhancement) and for differences in the
direction of materially distorted graphs (obfuscation).
Findings - For the overall sample we find substantial evidence of both enhancement and
obfuscation in the graph displays. We also find more limited evidence that impression
management differs across companies facing different regulatory structures.
Research limitations/implications – We investigate graph use for only one year’s
reports and for a sample of large companies from only six different countries. Further,
our enhancement findings are not evidence that the companies are necessarily providing
misleading information. However, our results show that the way information is being
provided in corporate sustainability reports appears to be manipulated by the firms to
enhance a positive image and to obfuscate negative trends. The reports may thus be less
about increasing corporate accountability across the social and environmental domains
than about managing impressions. Hence, it may be beneficial for advocate organizations
such as the Global Reporting Initiative to provide additional guidance on “how”
information gets portrayed in sustainability reports.
Originality/value – Our study expands prior research into corporate manipulation of
graphs to the domain of sustainability reporting and adds further evidence that the
reporting needs to be carefully assessed
Impression Management in Sustainability Reports: An Empirical Investigation of the Use of Graphs.
Full text linkThe purpose of this paper is to investigate whether firms use graphs in their sustainability reports in order to present a more favorable view of their social and environmental performance. Further, because prior research indicates that companies use social and environmental disclosure as a tool to reduce their exposure to social and political pressures (the legitimacy argument), we also examine whether differences in the extent of impression management are associated with differences in social and environmental performance. Based on an analysis of graphs in sustainability reports for a sample of 77 U.S. companies for 2006, we find considerable evidence of favorable selectivity bias in the choice of items graphed, and moderate evidence that where distortion in graphing occurs, it also has a favorable bias. Our results regarding the relation between impression management and performance are mixed. Whereas we find that graphs of social items in sustainability reports for companies with worse social performance exhibit more impression management, no significant relation between environmental performance and impression management in the use of environmental graphs is found. Overall, our results provide additional evidence that corporate sustainability reporting, as it currently exists, appears to be more about fostering positive public relations than providing a meaningful accounting of the social and environmental impacts of the firm
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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