In this paper we explore whether a number of elements influence the levels of corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure in the annual reports of Polish companies. These elements include the following: company size, profitability, financial leverage, industry environmental sensitivity, board size, women on the board, internationalization, and reputation. We use content analysis to determine the quality of CSR disclosures. We test our hypotheses using a Tobit regression analysis on a sample of 60 reports from Polish companies listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange. We find industry environmental sensitivity to have significant influence on CSR disclosures. Our research findings also reveal a relationship between company turnover, duration of the stock exchange listing, inclusion in the Respect Index portfolio and foreign capital share, and the level of CSR disclosures. This study extends the scope of previous studies by including non-commonly used independent variables: the company’s internationalization and reputation. To the authors’ knowledge, it is the primary step to investigating CSR reporting practices coupled with the corporate characteristics in a Central and Eastern European country such as Poland. The paper contributes to the understanding of determinants of CSR disclosure and offers findings which are potentially useful for both theory and practice.

Various environmental policy instruments supporting the development of renewable energy are used on an increasing scale as part of the policy of mitigating climate change and more. In our paper, we examine the influence of environmental policy stringency on renewable energy production in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia for the period 1993–2012 after controlling for gross domestic product per capita growth, CO₂ emissions per capita and income inequality. We use the Panel Pooled Mean Group Autoregressive Distributive Lag model to analyze the long-run and the short-run relationship between restrictiveness of environmental policy and renewable energy generation. The results reveal that, in the long run, a more stringent environmental policy has a positive impact both on the increase in the absolute volume of renewable energy production, as well as on the replacement of energy from fossil sources. Our main findings indicate that renewable energy production is positively influenced not only by the stringency of instruments aimed directly at the development of this energy sector, but also by the stringency of instruments with other environmental goals and by the overall level of restrictiveness of the environmental policy.

Drawing on resource dependency and upper echelons theories, we examine the relationship between directors' international orientation (IO) and the scope of non‐financial disclosures (NFD) in a two‐tier board structure. Evidence from a regression analysis on a sample of non‐financial firms listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange for the 2014–2018 period shows that the IO of supervisory board members significantly and positively impacts the scope of NFD. We also find that women with IO influence the scope of NFD, whereas accounting and finance experience decreases the focus on NFD elements, especially environmental information. The results imply that both the IO of the supervisory board and the bundle of characteristics facilitate the move toward sustainable development. The findings of our study should be of interest to companies, regulators and policymakers to integrate sustainability practices into their corporate strategies.

In this study, we examined the relationship between university students’ engagement in a blended learning course and their performance. We also explored the roles which gender and nationality may play in the learning process. Our sample consisted of 335 students of International Accounting course. We used 23,796 student access computer logs as a proxy for their engagement in e-learning and the number of points obtained for completing the course tasks as the measure of their performance. We analyzed the relationship between them with the use of the Pearson correlation coefficient. Our study results revealed that participants’ engagement in e-learning had a positive effect on their final performance. We were also able to state that the relationship between students’ engagement in e-learning and their performance differs according to nationality. We did not identify a significant difference between the students’ engagement and performance according to gender.

Smaller companies’ understanding of and attitude toward corporate social responsibility (CSR), both in terms of actions and disclosure, is distinct from that of other organizations, including large public interest entities (PIEs) that dominate the existing literature in the field. In this study, we examine the interdependencies between non-large PIEs’ CSR practices and disclosures with the use of the organizational hypocrisy concept as a theoretical lens. Our sample consists of 111 companies operating in Poland and pursuing 646 CSR-related practices in 2017. We perform content analysis of their websites using the disclosure index to assess the extent of their CSR disclosures. The total number of observations equals 1227. Both practices and disclosures are analyzed according to ISO 26000 standards. The relationship between the sample companies’ CSR talk and actions is analyzed by means of the Pearson coefficient. Our findings suggest that CSR practices and disclosures of non-large PIEs are loosely coupled. For the whole sample and for the non-SMEs (small and medium sized entities) subsample, the strongest association between the two was observed as regards the organizational governance area. As far as the SMEs are concerned, the statistically significant association between their CSR reporting and actions was identified for the environmental area. Our study contributes to the CSR literature, as it provides new insights into the relation between voluntary CSR talk and actions of non-large PIEs operating in a relatively unexplored setting.