Board characteristics and sustainability reporting of state-owned enterprises: evidence from Sub-Sahara Africa

Nana Konama Darteh and Gloria Fiorani

Meditari Accountancy Research, 2025, vol. 33, issue 7, 466-491

Abstract: PurposeThis paper aims to examine the extent of sustainability reporting by state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries and its relationship with selected board characteristics (size, independence, gender diversity and meetings).Design/methodology/approachData was gathered from the annual reports of 78 SSA SOEs during 2012–2022 through a content analysis approach, and analysed using panel data regressions.FindingsSSA SOEs’ sustainability reporting is moderate. Additionally, the selected board characteristics and the extent of sustainability reporting have an insignificant relationship. This conclusion holds even when the sample is split between listed and unlisted SOEs.Practical implicationsThe insights can inform authorities and policymakers to strengthen the corporate governance mechanisms of all SOEs, as the findings reveal a low level of reporting and insignificant relationships with the extent of sustainability reporting.Originality/valueTo the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to examine the relationship between board characteristics and the extent of SOE sustainability reporting in SSA using a multi-country sample of listed and unlisted SOEs. It also extends the literature by showing that within the SSA context, the nexus between corporate governance characteristics and sustainability reporting by SOEs does not vary between listed and unlisted SOEs.

Keywords: Corporate governance; Board characteristics; Sustainability reporting; State-owned enterprises; Sub-Sahara Africa (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.emerald.com/medar/article/33/7/466/130 ... ainability-reporting (text/html)
https://www.emerald.com/medar/article-pdf/33/7/466 ... r-08-2024-2607en.pdf (application/pdf)

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:eme:medarp:medar-08-2024-2607

DOI: 10.1108/MEDAR-08-2024-2607

Access Statistics for this article

Meditari Accountancy Research is currently edited by Prof Charl de Villiers and Warren Maroun

More articles in Meditari Accountancy Research from Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Emerald Support ().