1 Introduction
This introduction section presents background information on the emergence of sustainability reporting and sustainability issues. Research problem discussion is also included that leads to the research objectives and research questions around which this research is proposed to be built. Further on the significant of the research and the target group that the research is aimed at are presented.
1.1 Background
Nowadays, there are a lot of social, environmental and economic issues arise for instance global warming, economic fluctuations, climates changes, child labour, gender discrimination and also other problems that are widely discussed by the society at all levels. The ...view middle of the document...
Therefore, businesses today are preparing extra reports and statements to prove to the society about the activities that they have engaged in preserving social, economic and environments. One of the reports is sustainability reporting. As defined by Global Reporting Initiative (2011), sustainability reporting is the practice of measuring, disclosing, and being accountable to internal and external stakeholders for organisational performance towards the goal of sustainable development. Since the emerging of sustainability reporting issues back in 1970s (Laine, 2009), there are already quite a numerous attempts made by researchers and practitioners to define the exact meaning of sustainability reporting. The term sustainability reporting is broad and synonymous with others used to describe reporting on economic, environmental, and social impacts of organisational performance and operations, for instance triple bottom line reporting, corporate social responsibility reporting and environmental reporting (Global Reporting Initiative, 2011; KPMG, 2011; Mohammed, Alwi, & Muhammad Jamil, 2010). The broad areas of disclosure include governance, environment, human and labour rights, economic factors, local communities and society.
Sustainability reporting prompts performance monitoring as it meant to enhance the level of transparency of the companies’ overall operations activities. Therefore, this would leads to business improvements, increased brand reputation, and also as an assessment of non-financial risk. Besides, the practice of reporting can help to increase the companies’ ability to communicate with investors regarding their social impact and KPIs . It can be an important tool to engage and communicate with the stakeholders and has the ability to attract talent, as it was felt that the younger generation is more impressed by the sustainability activities involves and reported by companies (The Association of Chartered Certified Accountants, 2013).
1.2 Research Problem
Increased adoption of sustainability reporting by public listed companies deemed to offer numerous probabilities of advantages to be acquired. Among all, sustainability reporting seems to make social and environmental impacts of corporations more transparent, which in turn could lead to better accountability for every corporate action on their operations.
Lopez (2010) argues in her articles that Malaysia boasts the most companies producing sustainability reports within ASEAN. Within five ASEAN countries, namely Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore and Philippines, Malaysia have the distinction of having the highest numbers of companies involve in sustainability reporting (Lopez, 2010). There is explicit government and regulatory support of corporate social responsibility and sustainability and one of them is through mandating disclosure.
In September 2006, Bursa Malaysia, the Stock Exchange of Malaysia, requires public listed companies to provide a description of corporate...
