Is it a sententious claim? An examination of the quality of occupational health, safety and well-being disclosures in global reporting initiative reports across industries and countries

Sugumar Mariappanadar, Iris Maurer, Robin Kramar and Michael Muller-Camen

International Business Review, 2022, vol. 31, issue 2

Abstract: The study attempts to reveal differences in the quality of information disclosed on occupational health, safety (OHS) and well-being in 250 sustainability reports within and between large companies in different industries and countries (i.e., market economies). Using a mixed research design, our results indicate that industry affiliation and type of market economy have no significant influence on the quality of disclosure on OHS and well-being aspects. Instead, companies tend to disclose information on legal requirements and OHS standards to secure their social legitimacy. However, in the finance, insurance, and real estate industry groups, membership in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index emerged as an influencing factor on the quality of disclosures on employees’ well-being. In general, companies merely disclose sententious information about OHS and well-being in disclosures of management approaches in the Global Reporting Initiative, and otherwise rarely attempt to translate their claims into outcomes. Contributions to institutional theories and practices are discussed.

Keywords: Health and safety disclosure; Well-being disclosure; Disclosure quality; Global reporting initiative; Sustainability reporting; CSR reporting; Industry and country differences (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0969593121001402
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:iburev:v:31:y:2022:i:2:s0969593121001402

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/133/bibliographic
http://www.elsevier. ... me/133/bibliographic

DOI: 10.1016/j.ibusrev.2021.101922

Access Statistics for this article

International Business Review is currently edited by P. Ghauri

More articles in International Business Review from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().