Abstract
Civil liberties enable the media, social movements, and other stakeholders to expect companies to be more transparent and forthcoming with relevant social and environmental information. Drawing on social movement theory in general, and the notion of civil liberty in particular, we analyse the availability of social and environmental information of 300 financial companies from 50 countries over a nine-year period, to investigate the influence of country-level civil liberties on the availability of social and environmental information.
We find that companies headquartered in countries with high levels of civil liberties make more social and environmental information publicly available than companies headquartered in countries with low levels of civil liberties. Furthermore, an improvement in civil liberties in countries with lower civil liberties has a bigger impact on changes in the availability of social and environmental information.
Our research is relevant for the ongoing concerns of social and environmental transparency initiatives by governments, NGOs, and civil rights organisations. Policy implications for countries with lower civil liberties (typical developing nations) are that if they wish to encourage more transparent corporate information, they need to strengthen their country-level civil liberties.
We find that companies headquartered in countries with high levels of civil liberties make more social and environmental information publicly available than companies headquartered in countries with low levels of civil liberties. Furthermore, an improvement in civil liberties in countries with lower civil liberties has a bigger impact on changes in the availability of social and environmental information.
Our research is relevant for the ongoing concerns of social and environmental transparency initiatives by governments, NGOs, and civil rights organisations. Policy implications for countries with lower civil liberties (typical developing nations) are that if they wish to encourage more transparent corporate information, they need to strengthen their country-level civil liberties.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 101018 |
| Number of pages | 18 |
| Journal | The British Accounting Review |
| Volume | 54 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| Early online date | 25 Jan 2022 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Jan 2022 |
Bibliographical note
AcknowledgementsWe thank seminar participants at Macquarie University (Sydney), the University of Tasmania (Hobart), Auckland Uni-versity of Technology (Auckland), the University of South Australia (Adelaide), the University of Calgary (Canada), the Uni-versity of Aberdeen (Scotland), Durham University (England) the University of Regensburg (Germany) and Simon FraserUniversity (Canada) for their thoughtful comments. We also thank participants at the 13th World Congress of AccountingEducators and Researchers (IAAER) in Sydney in 2018 and participants at the 31st International Congress on Social andEnvironmental Accounting Research (CSEAR) in St Andrews in 2019 for their helpful comments.
Keywords
- Social movements
- civil liberties
- Corporate social and environmental information disclosure
- transparency
- financial institutions