Purpose: – Drawn on social psychology theory of impression management (IM), the purpose of this paper is to assess the way Portuguese managers build their narratives in chairman’s statement (CS) to manage stakeholders’ perceptions on corporate image, in a period of time of scarce resources.Design/methodology/approach: – The paper’s theoretical framework draws on elements of social psychology theory of IM developed by Leary and Kowalski (1990). Through the use of the two-component model of IM (impression motivation and impression construction) the 45 CSs of Portuguese non-finance companies were content analysed to understand how managers build their voluntary communication strategies.Findings: – Results indicate that organisational outcome does not influence the adoption of IM strategies. But public visibility and consumer proximity are crucial factors in explaining them. Larger companies with high consumer proximity present themselves in a favourable way, but consistent with an overall reading of the annual report. These companies show a higher level of verbosity, consistent to the argument of retrospective rationality.Originality/value: – The present study goes beyond Merkl-Davieset al.(2011) work and obtains insightful knowledge on the influence of goal relevance of impression in three different perspectives: company’s public visibility, company’s dependency from debtholders, and consumer proximity. Moreover, the analysis uses a period of scarce resources and a European Latin country, with no tradition in publishing CSs, but that recently has changed its financial reporting practices from an institutional code-law logic to an institutional common-law logic. A research setting like this has not been studied hitherto.

Europe has just published a new Directive on Corporate Sustainability Reporting disclosure and is elaborating new European Sustainability Reporting Standards. To analyze whether companies are complying with the new disclosure requirements before the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CRSD) on sustainability comes into force, a content analysis was carried out on the corporate reports of 12 companies in the Portuguese Stock Index of Euronext Lisbon for the year 2022, complemented by the score analysis technique. From the study of general disclosures (European Sustainability Reporting Standards—ESRS 2), we concluded that although some companies already comply with various requirements of this standard, they are not disclosing all the information required by ESRS 2 on sustainability. We also concluded, by analyzing the companies’ reports for 2022, that the requirements of the CSRD have different levels of disclosure.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper to analyze the risk reporting practices and its determinants of commercial banks during the period of the adoption of the Basel II Accord in Portugal.Design/methodology/approach: The paper conducts a content analysis of the risk and risk management sections included in the management reports and the notes of the annual reports of Portuguese commercial banks, for the years 2007, 2010 and 2013.Findings: Findings show that theoretical frameworks underpinned in agency and legitimacy theories continue to provide valid explanations for risk reporting by Portuguese banks. More specifically, findings indicate that agency costs, public visibility and reputation are crucial drivers of risk reporting. Findings also indicate that younger banks with lower risk management skills use risk reporting either as an informational process or as a channel to manage organizational legitimacy.Research limitations/implications: The content analysis does not allow readily for in-depth qualitative inquiry. The coding instrument is subject to coder bias. Information about risk can be provided in sources other than annual reports. Additionally, not all banks disclose information on corporate governance-related variables that could also influence risk reporting.Originality/value: The current research setting has never been studied hitherto. In this sense, this study seems to be of great relevance given the scarcity of literature on the subject in Portugal.

The present study aims to assess the determinants of the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance of European insurance companies, exploring the connections between the determinants and each of the three ESG pillars. Using a European panel dataset, the study includes a sample of the 30 most relevant European insurance companies listed in the stock exchange index Stoxx Europe 600 index, over the period 2016–2020. Main findings indicate that older insurance companies, with a larger dimension and profitability, less leveraged, with smaller boards, but with more gender diverse boards, with a sustainability committee and with a standalone sustainability report, tend to present a higher level of ESG performance. Findings also indicate that insurance companies with higher ESG performance are located in countries with higher gross domestic product growth rate. The current research setting has never been studied hitherto. Therefore, it adds to the limited empirical research on the determinants of ESG performance among insurance companies, which is focused on insurances companies in the United States of America.

The COVID-19 pandemic had a significant impact on the economy and the stability of financial markets, creating challenges and financial risks for companies. This study analyzes the financial reports of companies listed on Euronext Lisbon with the aim of examining financial risk disclosures and calculating their determinants. For this purpose, data was collected from the Euronext Lisbon website as well as the companies’ own websites. Once the data were gathered, 16 companies were analyzed over a five-year period, from 2018 to 2022. Using panel data regression techniques (e.g., fixed effects regression models), it was observed that profitability, capital structure, and size have a positive but not statistically significant relationship with interest risk. Conversely, size and capital structure they have a positive and significant relationship with liquidity risk. Profitability has a positive and significant relationship with insolvency risk. Macroeconomic variables do not exhibit consistent signs across all models. This research provides insights into how the determinants of financial risks influence risks during a pandemic period.