Recent policy changes in sustainability reporting, such as the ones related to the new European Directive on non-financial disclosure (2014/95/EU), the standards issued by the American Sustainability Accounting Standard Board (SASB), the G4 guidelines issued by the Global Sustainability Standard Board (GSSB), and the framework of the International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC) stress the importance of extending the disclosure of ethical, social, and environmental risks within financial and social-environmental reporting. Institutional pressure has notably increased among organizations, in setting up risk management tools to understand sustainability risks within managerial and reporting practices. Given such institutional pressure, the corporate reaction in providing additional sustainability risk disclosure calls for attention and scrutiny. Therefore, this study aims at addressing such issues from an exploratory perspective. We based our analysis on a sample of large Italian organizations that issued sustainability disclosure in accordance with the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), G4 guidelines, and we tested the relationship between their level of risk disclosure and other relevant variables. Consistently with the literature, we found that “experienced” sustainable reporters provide a significant volume of disclosure, and that disclosure quality on risk is positively influenced by their international presence and reporting experience. However, when accounting for specific risk-related areas of disclosure, only a few of them seem to adopt a managerial perspective linking strategy, risk metrics, and disclosure.

Purpose: Can sustainability disclosures be a tool for executing image restoration strategies after corporate manslaughter? This is the question explored in this study of Costa Crociere's sustainability reports after the Concordia disaster.Design/methodology/approach: Merging traditional textual content analysis with visual analysis and supported by machine learning tools, this is a predominantly qualitative study framed by legitimacy theory, image restoration theory and impression management.Findings: Costa Crociere's voluntary sustainability reporting is strongly influenced by a mix of text and visual signals that distract readers' attention from the disaster. A “nothing really happened” communication strategy pervades the disclosures, with the only rational motivation being to change perceptions and erase memories of this tragic and avoidable event.Research limitations/implications: Although the analysis covered multiple sources of corporate information, media coverage was not one of them. A more in-depth exploration of sustainability reporting in the cruise industry, including evidence of similar cases, to test impression management theory would be a worthwhile avenue for future research.Social implications: While Costa Crociere technically followed the customary guidelines of disclosing human resource impacts, there was almost no acknowledgement of the people involved in the accident. Costa Concierevastly understated their responsibility for the accident, did not apologize, and conveyed very little remorse. The majority of disclosures centred on disaster recovery management.Originality/value: The authors discuss why and how a company can overcome a legitimacy threat by completely freezing its voluntary sustainability reporting, and the authors show how a company can restore its image by minimizing specific aspects of an accident and shifting attention from the human victims to corporate operations. Incorporating image recognition driven by AI models and combining the results with narrative disclosures contributes an innovative and original analysis technique to the field of impression management. In addition, this research also contributes to our knowledge on the cruise industry – a sector currently under scrutiny for its ethical, social and environmental practices.

As a response to the urgent call for recovery actions against the COVID-19 crisis, this research aims to identify action priority areas post COVID-19 toward achieving the targets of the sustainable development goals (SDGs) within the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development launched by the United Nations (UN). This paper applies a mixed-method approach to map the post-COVID-19 SDGs targets on a fuzzy action priority surface at the country level in Iran, as a developing country, by taking the following four main steps: (1) using a modified Delphi method to make a list of the SDGs targets influenced by COVID-19; (2) using the best–worst method, as a multi-criteria decision-making tool, to weight the COVID-19 effects on the SDGs targets achievement; also (3) to weight the impact of the SDGs targets on the sustainable development implementation; and finally (4) designing a fuzzy inference system to calculate the action priority scores of the SDGs targets. As a result, reduction of poor people proportion by half (SDG 1.2), development-oriented policies for supporting creativity and job creation (SDG 8.3), end the pandemics and other epidemics (SDG 3.3), reduction of deaths and economic loss caused by disasters (SDG 11.5), and financial support for small-scale enterprises (SDG 9.3) were identified as the highest priorities for action, respectively, in the recovery agenda for sustainable development post COVID-19. The provided fuzzy action priority surface supports the UN’s SDGs achievement and implementing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development in Iran. It also serves as a guideline to help the government, stakeholders, and policy-makers better analyze the long-term effects of the pandemic on the SDGs and their associated targets and mitigate its adverse economic, social, and environmental consequences. Graphical abstract