Through the rhetoric art: CEO incentives in sustainability sensitive industries

Yosra Mnif and Jihene Kchaou

Meditari Accountancy Research, 2021, vol. 31, issue 3, 576-601

Abstract: Purpose - This paper aims to explore the relationship between the readability of sustainability reports and chief executive officer (CEO) attributes, comprising monetary, non-monetary incentives and personal characteristics. Design/methodology/approach - The study is based on an international sample of companies operating in sustainability-sensitive industries during 2016–2018. Findings - The results prove that CEO monetary incentives, as well as CEO non-monetary incentives, negatively influence the readability of sustainability reports, revealed in a positive relationship with readability indexes, by providing reports with greater reading difficulty. Additionally, this study shows evidence about the relation of complementarity between these incentives. Other CEO characteristics have no significant effect on the readability of sustainability reports. Originality/value - This research sheds the light on the role of CEO incentives in obfuscating sustainability information to portray the company, operating in sustainability-sensitive industries, in a favorable image.

Keywords: Sustainability reporting; Readability; CEO incentives; Sustainability-sensitive industries (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (text/html)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (application/pdf)
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:eme:medarp:medar-09-2021-1451

DOI: 10.1108/MEDAR-09-2021-1451

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 ().