Our study investigates the impact of the board of directors’ attributes on companies’ environmental disclosure. The sample comprised 1,037 companies from Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States between 2015 and 2018. The results reveal that the percentage of independent auditors, board size, and the presence of the sustainability committee positively influence environmental disclosure. Our findings show that greater diversity on the board is an important factor for companies to disclose more information on their emissions. We conclude that companies should pay greater attention to the characteristics of their boards of directors, as this determines their engagement in environmental issues. This research presents an environmental disclosure index that is less susceptible to greenwashing. The results also bring contributions to the resource dependence theory and agency theory.

We analysed the influence of the characteristics of national business systems on the disclosure of gender-related corporate social responsibility practices by 150 companies in Latin America that signed the Declaration of Support for Women’s Empowerment Principles. The highest level of disclosure was related to the establishment of high-level corporate leadership for gender equality. Results show that the country’s level of “concentration of power” and “individualism”, and the “orientation towards femininity” have a negative influence on the disclosure of gender-related practices; in addition, the country’s level of “economic development” and the “pressure of unions” exert a positive influence. The results highlight the important role that some national and local institutions play in the women’s empowerment, leading companies to report information on adopted practices. The study innovates and contributes by introducing the explanation of gender-related social disclosure with the national business system approach in Latin America.

This study aims to answer the following research question: How does national culture affect environmental disclosure in liberal economies? Several previous studies have shown that formal institutions, such as the characteristics of the government, the country's financial system, have an influence on environmental disclosure. However, there is still a gap in the literature on how informal institutions (the country's culture) can influence the behavior of companies. The results of this study provide a solid understanding of environmental disclosure in liberal economies. In these economies, it is common for companies to be more interested in disclosing financial and governance information. Thus, analyzing environmental disclosure in these companies presents an additional gain for the literature. Managers can use our findings to understand how the country's culture can influence their business. The adoption of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) disclosure guidelines and the presence of a sustainability committee in the company can help companies achieve better environmental performance. We examined the level of environmental disclosure for a sample of 1,037 companies based in Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, United Kingdom, and United States of America (USA) for the period 2015-2018. To measure national culture, we used the proposed cultural dimensions by Hofstede (1983): distance to power, individualism, masculinity, aversion to uncertainty, long-term orientation, and indulgence. Our evidence shows that power distance, individualism, and masculinity have a positive effect on environmental disclosure. The results show that in cultures with less aversion to uncertainty, companies disclose more environmental information. Our findings also show us that companies that carry out an environmental disclosure following GRI guidelines disclose more sustainability information. The results show that sectors such as energy, materials, and utilities have greater environmental disclosure.

Governança Corporativa e Desempenho dos Bancos Listados na B3 em Ambiente de Crise Econômica

The objective of this study is to determine whether or not social information disclosure practices of the top 15 Brazilian and top 15 French companies listed in the Forbes global ranking differ due to company size, country of origin, using the 16 indicators of the United Nations publication ‛Guidance on Corporate Responsibility Indicators in Annual Reports’ as benchmark. The empirical evidence is further analyzed using Institutional Theory as support. The study is based on a literature review and documents issued by the companies in the selected sample. The methodology is exploratory, quantitative and qualitative. The results revealed that disclosure practices by companies in both countries are similar, with no statistical significance connected to company size or country of origin. This result can further be explained by institutionalism in each country, a key featured that made it possible to use Institutional Theory as an important support to the main empirical results of the study