Corporate Environmental Disclosure in India: An Analysis of Multinational and Domestic Agrochemical Corporations

Anna Jessop, Nicole Wilson, Michal Bardecki and Cory Searcy
Additional contact information
Anna Jessop: Environmental Applied Science and Management, Ryerson University, Toronto, ON M5B 2K3, Canada
Nicole Wilson: Environmental Applied Science and Management, Ryerson University, Toronto, ON M5B 2K3, Canada
Michal Bardecki: Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, Ryerson University, Toronto, ON M5B 2K3, Canada
Cory Searcy: Yeates School of Graduate Studies, Ryerson University, Toronto, ON M5B 2K3, Canada

Sustainability, 2019, vol. 11, issue 18, 1-33

Abstract: The existing corporate environmental disclosure (CED) research focuses primarily on large companies operating in a single jurisdiction, leaving a gap of knowledge regarding the subsidiary operations of multinational corporations. In this study, consolidated narrative interrogation (CONI) is used to quantify CEDs presented in annual and stand-alone sustainability reports published over a 15-year span between 2002 and 2016 by agrochemical companies operating in India. Results show that the diversity, the quantity, and the quality of CED vary significantly, but generally each of them has been improving over time—most notably following the revisions to the Companies Act in 2013. The study finds that the subsidiaries of multinational agrochemical corporations implemented CED practices more strongly associated with those of domestic companies than those found in the reports produced by their parent companies. The CED of both subsidiary and domestic companies appears to reflect concerns of local legitimacy.

Keywords: corporate environmental disclosure; agrochemical industry; India; multinational corporations; subsidiaries; legitimacy theory (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/18/4843/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/18/4843/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:11:y:2019:i:18:p:4843-:d:264321

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().