Board attributes and companies’ choice of sustainability assurance providers

Kholod Alsahali, Ricardo Malagueño and Ana Marques

Accounting and Business Research, 2024, vol. 54, issue 4, 392-422

Abstract: We study whether and how the monitoring quality of the board of directors is associated with the choice of providers of assurance for sustainability disclosures. We also examine whether this relation depends on companies’ economic, legal, and social environment. In an international empirical study considering five categories of assurance providers, we find that key board attributes, including board size, frequency of board meetings, CEO separation, proportion of women on the board, and the existence of a sustainability committee affect the type of assurance provider chosen by companies. Overall, companies with higher board monitoring quality are more likely to appoint a Big 4 assurer for their sustainability disclosures. Companies with a sustainability committee are more likely to engage an engineering firm, while firms with more board meetings are more likely to appoint an expert assurer. Moreover, we find that companies based in countries with strong environments are more likely to engage an external assurance provider, particularly a Big 4 assurer or an engineering firm. Overall, our results indicate that international sustainability disclosure assurance choices depend on corporate governance practices, as well as countries’ economic, social and legal environment.

Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00014788.2023.2181141 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:taf:acctbr:v:54:y:2024:i:4:p:392-422

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RABR20

DOI: 10.1080/00014788.2023.2181141

Access Statistics for this article

Accounting and Business Research is currently edited by Vivien Beattie

More articles in Accounting and Business Research from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().