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This paper aims to examine the nature and extent of forward-looking disclosures in early examples of integrated reporting and to investigate the determinants of those disclosures.

The sample for research involved 55 non-financial companies whose reports are available in the Integrated Reporting Examples Database for the year 2014. The authors used content analysis to investigate the quantitative and qualitative forward-looking disclosures among early adopters of integrated reporting. The forward-looking disclosure index (FLDI) was categorized into two main groups, quantitative and qualitative, including 30 items in total. Multivariate ordinary least squares regression was used to investigate the associations proposed in the research hypotheses.

The authors determined that the majority of the entities tended to provide qualitative forward-looking disclosures rather than quantitative. Further, the findings showed that gender diversity and firm size are positively related to forward-looking disclosures, whereas leverage is negatively related to forward-looking disclosures. Contrary to expectations, the authors did not find a significant impact created by board size, board composition, profitability or industry on forward-looking disclosures.

The research contributes to the current integrated reporting and forward-looking disclosure literature. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, there is no prior study that has investigated forward-looking disclosures in integrated reports. This study contributes to the current literature by examining the determinants of forward-looking disclosures by categorizing them as quantitative and qualitative. Further, this research adds empirical findings to the literature on the association found between female directors and forward-looking disclosures.

The purpose of this study is to investigate empirically what affects Global Reporting Initiative (GRI)-based sustainability reporting and its relationship with firm performance in the aviation industry between 2006 and 2015.

The authors derived data from the GRI Sustainability Disclosure Database and Thomson Reuters EIKON; from the former, they downloaded GRI-based reports, and from the latter, they obtained financial data. The authors performed four-level analysis – report existence, report count, application level of report and firm performance –using various regression models (i.e. logistic regression, Poisson regression, ordered logistic regression and ordinary least squares regression).

First, the authors based the analysis on the existence of GRI-based sustainability reports, which showed that firm size and leverage are positively associated with sustainability reporting. Contrary to expectations, ownership was negatively associated. Furthermore, free cash flow per share, growth and profitability do not have significant effects on sustainability reporting, in contrast to expectations. Subsequent analysis was based on report count (number of total published reports within the examination period) and application levels of reports. Compared to the preceding analysis, there were no notable surprises. In addition, we found evidence that growth is negatively associated with application levels of reports (partially supported). Thus, report existence, report count and application level results largely confirm each other. Finally, the authors tested the effect of sustainability reporting on firm performance, which did not produce significant results. Thus, in the aviation industry, sustainability reporting does not play a significant role in enhancing firm performance.

First, the findings show that larger and highly leveraged aviation firms can reduce agency and legitimacy costs through sustainability reporting. Surprisingly, the same assumption did not hold for ownership structure as the firms with diffused ownership base tend not to publish sustainability reports. Thus, boards are advised to establish and improve monitoring mechanisms in these types of firms. Second, although the number of aviation companies publishing separate sustainability reports has increased significantly over the years, almost half of the companies are not still producing sustainability reports. Hence, if the aviation industry believes the merits of engaging in sustainability issues and sincerely desires to enhance its sustainability reporting practices, the authors can suggest the following initiatives. Boards might encourage companies to incorporate sustainability issues into company operations by assigning the necessary financial and human resources. The boards might also establish a separate sustainability committee or department, which could focus on sustainability issues and reporting practices. Regulatory bodies could also encourage aviation companies to act in a socially and environmentally responsible manner by proposing legal requirements and providing guidance.

Relevant civil organisations and environmental activists might undertake more active roles to enhance awareness of sustainability issues in the aviation industry.

Most of the prior studies did not focus on standalone GRI-based sustainability reports, and they were conducted on limited samples and not the aviation industry in particular. This study aims to fill these gaps empirically by establishing testable hypotheses and attempting to demonstrate the validity of theoretical relationships in a wide range of data and among aviation companies worldwide. In this sense, this study is unique in what it undertakes. This study also tests whether sustainability reporting impacts firm value in the aviation industry which, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, has not been examined in prior studies to this extent.

Exploiting two novel measures of takeover vulnerability and asset redeployability, this paper aims to investigate the effect of the takeover market on redeployable assets. Redeployable assets are those with alternative uses. Asset redeployability is a crucial concept in the literature on investment irreversibility.

In addition to the standard regression analysis, the authors execute several robustness checks: propensity score matching, entropy balancing, instrumental-variable analysis and generalized method of moment dynamic panel data analysis.

The authors’ results reveal that more takeover threats reduce asset redeployability significantly, corroborating the managerial myopia hypothesis. Hostile takeover threats reduce managers’ job security and thus induce them to myopically focus on the current utilization of assets in the short run, rather than how they may be deployed in the long run, resulting in less asset redeployability.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to investigate the effect of takeover threats on asset redeployability. Because the authors’ measure of takeover vulnerability is principally based on the staggered passage of state legislations, which are plausibly exogenous, the authors’ results likely reflect causality, rather than merely an association.

Theory suggests that the market for corporate control, which constitutes an important external governance mechanism, may substitute for internal governance. Consistent with this notion, using a novel measure of takeover vulnerability primarily based on state legislation, this paper aims to investigate the effect of the takeover market on board characteristics with special emphasis on board gender diversity.

This paper exploits a novel measure of takeover vulnerability based on state legislation. This novel measure is likely exogenous as the legislation was imposed from outside the firm. By using an exogenous measure, the analysis is less vulnerable to endogeneity and is thus more likely to show a causal effect.

The results show that a more active takeover market leads to lower board gender diversity. Specifically, a rise in takeover vulnerability by one standard deviation results in a decline in board gender diversity by 10.01%. Moreover, stronger takeover market susceptibility also brings about larger board size and less board independence, corroborating the substitution effect. Additional analysis confirms the results, including propensity score matching, generalized method of moments dynamic panel data analysis and instrumental variable analysis.

The study is the first to explore the effect of the takeover market on board gender diversity. Unlike most of the previous research in this area, which suffers from endogeneity, this paper uses a novel measure of takeover vulnerability that is probably exogenous. The results are thus much more likely to demonstrate causality.

Drawing on neo-institutional, stakeholder, social contract and contingency theories, the objective of this study is to examine whether cultural values across countries may influence decisions to assure integrated reports.

For this purpose, the authors have collected integrated reporting assurance, national culture and firm-specific data from several sources for the years ranging between 2011 and 2016 and have performed pooled and panel logistic regression analyses.

The authors found that corporations established in countries where the following characteristics prevail have higher tendencies to assure integrated reports: high collectivism among people, low power distance, strong feminine values rather than masculine values, high uncertainty avoidance, pursuance of short-term goals rather than long-term and a low level of indulgence.

The study is not free from limitations. First, the authors were only able to obtain assurance data for the years between 2011 and 2016 since 2011 was the initial year in which integrated reporting was adopted. Second, culture variables used throughout the study remained the same for each year due to the unavailability of differing data. This was noted in prior studies as well; thus, this is not an exception. Third, the assumption that all companies in a country have the same culture score is inherent in the scoring system of countries (Orij, 2010).

Based on the results, the authors drew implications for organizations, policymakers and assurance service providers. Multinational corporations can benefit from the outcome of this study by considering national cultures in formulating their corporate strategies. Finally, assurance service providers can position themselves in the marketplace by the findings of this study.

This paper aims to enhance the comprehension of corporate reporting practices by companies that operate in different countries, with necessarily varying cultural values. To the best knowledge of the authors, no prior study has yet examined the impact of national culture on the assurance of integrated reports.

Drawing on institutional theory and knowledge spillover, the study aims to examine whether there is a causality relationship between macroeconomic factors and research productivity.

The study uses fixed-effects (FE) panel regression analysis, utilizing 1,614 country–year observations and 541,732 citable publications between 1996 and 2017, to explore the relationship between macroeconomic factors, research and development (R&D) expenditure and research productivity in economics and finance.

The results highlight a two-way relationship between R&D expenditure and economic development and research productivity. However, research productivity has no relationship with foreign direct investment (FDI), trade and financial development. In terms of remaining macroeconomic factors, financial development, trade and FDI have insignificant associations with research productivity in both directions of causality. In line with institutional theory, the findings support the notion that economically more developed countries and countries dedicating greater R&D funds have more potential to support research activities. On the other hand, in line with knowledge spillover, the research output of nations contributes to the economic development and expansion of R&D budgets. The results are robust to alternative methodology, endogeneity concerns, additional control variables, alternative sampling and alternative research productivity proxy.

The study suggests practical implications for nations to formulate macro-policies and a better research environment for academicians and to establish links between academic research and macroeconomic factors.

First, as there is limited research focusing on the bidirectional causality between the macroeconomic environment and academic research activity, the study adds to the understanding of the causality relationship between these two constructs. Second, it examines the bidirectional relationship between macroeconomic factors and research output at a global scale, while prior studies mostly focus on a single country, or a certain region or continent. Further, it is one of the few attempts particularly focusing on economics and finance research's bidirectional relation with the macroeconomic environment.

The purpose of this study is to investigate whether corporate governance characteristics impact the voluntary disclosure of carbon emissions.

This empirical research was carried out in two stages. Initially, the carbon disclosures data were sourced from the annual and stand-alone sustainability reports of Turkish non-financial companies listed on Borsa Istanbul during 2011-2015. Later, the corporate governance characteristics that influence carbon disclosures were examined using panel data regression models.

The empirical findings of this study suggested that entities with a higher number of independent directors on their boards were more likely to respond to the Carbon Disclosure Project. In addition, board nationality diversity and the existence of a sustainability committee had a significant positive impact on the propensity to disclose carbon emissions and the extent of those disclosures.

This research provides empirical evidence of the determinants of carbon emission disclosures, which could be useful for organizations and regulatory bodies. Such an understanding is crucial to specify necessary policies that will provide emission reduction practices and policies for entities. This paper fills some of the gap in the literature by concentrating on the association between corporate governance characteristics and disclosures of a more specific environmental issue, being carbon emissions.

Taking advantage of a unique measure of corporate culture obtained from advanced machine learning algorithms, this study aims to explore how corporate culture strength is influenced by board independence, which is one of the most crucial aspects of the board of directors. Because of their independence from the corporation, outside independent directors are more likely to be unbiased. As a result, board independence is commonly used as a proxy for board quality.

In addition to the standard regression analysis, the authors execute a variety of additional tests, i.e. propensity score matching, an instrumental variable analysis, Lewbel’s (2012) heteroscedastic identification and Oster’s (2019) testing for coefficient stability.

The results show that stronger board independence, measured by a higher proportion of independent directors, is significantly associated with corporate culture. In particular, a rise in board independence by one standard deviation results in an improvement in corporate culture by 32.8%.

Conducting empirical research on corporate culture is incredibly difficult due to the inherent difficulties in recognizing and assessing corporate culture, resulting in a lack of empirical research on corporate culture in the literature. The authors fill this important void in the literature. Exploiting a novel measure of corporate culture based on textual analysis, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to link corporate culture to corporate governance with a specific focus on board independence.

Board committees enable boards to function effectively, as committees improve the quality of corporate governance by fulfilling specific, assigned tasks. This study aims to explore how board structure, CEO duality and audit quality are associated with board committee structure in the context of an emerging market, namely, Turkey.

The sample consisted of 122 firms listed on the Industrial Index of Borsa Istanbul for the years between 2012 and 2014, inclusive, and this yielded 366 firm-year observations. To test the hypotheses, the panel data analysis method was used, which enabled the elimination of certain problems, such as multicollinearity and estimation bias, as well as specification of the time-variant association between the predictor variables and the output variable.

Board size, board independence and firm size had a positive association with the number and size of board committees, whereas CEO duality had a negative association with the number and size of board committees. Moreover, the appointment of female members on audit and corporate governance committees was more frequent in firms that had a high proportion of women on their boards. Finally, audit quality was positively associated with the existence of risk committee, the overall diversity of board committees and the diversity of corporate governance committees.

The study is not free from limitations. It covers the time span between 2012 and 2014; thus, readers should be cautious about generalizing these results longitudinally, as a different time periods could possibly yield different results. The second limitation concerns the fact that only industrial firms were sampled; thus, these findings may not be valid in other sectors.

The paper shifts the attention of researchers from overall board structure to board committee structure. The results of the study provide insights for policymakers, boards and shareholders. Policymakers can formulate boards and committees by considering these findings. Boards can benefit from the conclusions of this study in shaping their own structure and sub-committee structures. Current and potential shareholders may find the results of the study instructive in making investment decisions.

This study investigates the factors associated with the structure of overall and specific board committees. Additionally, while most prior research on board committees has sampled firms that are domiciled in developed countries, this study examines the subject in an emerging country context, namely Turkey. Moreover, this study adds to the literature by examining the association between audit quality and board committee structure, which has been largely neglected in prior literature.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the extent of voluntary climate change disclosures in the Turkish banking industry and explore the factors explaining the extent of such disclosures.

The research sample is based upon 24 banks that had been continuously operating in Turkey over the seven-year period from 2010 to 2016. The study uses a disclosure index to investigate the extent of voluntary climate change-related disclosures made in their annual and sustainability reports by banks. The study also investigates factors impacting the extent of disclosures by using multiple regression and fractional regression analysis.

The findings of the research reveal that while the number of banks providing voluntary information on their climate change-related practices substantially increased from 2010 to 2016, there remains a significant number of banks that have not incorporated climate change-related issues into their lending policies or corporate strategies. Further, with regard to the regression analysis, the study documents the significant and positive impacts of bank size, profitability, bank age and listing status upon the extent of the climate change disclosures, in line with political cost and legitimacy theory.

The banking sector crucially impacts climate change indirectly, since banks provide financial backing to companies operating in environmentally sensitive industries. This paper presents empirical evidence of the factors impacting the extent of climate change disclosures by these banks, which might then be referred to by regulatory bodies when developing policies to promote environmentally responsible business practices within the banking industry.

Several parties, which include governments, companies, financial institutions and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) must work together to fight climate change. In this sense, the NGOs and green activists have a crucial role in raising public awareness about climate change, which might then inspire financial institutions to incorporate climate change-related issues into their policies, operations and strategies.

The study extends the prior literature in two ways. This study has concentrated on environmental reporting practices in the banking sector which have been investigated in very few prior studies. Since prior research has focused on developed countries, this paper adds to the current literature by examining the environmental disclosure practices of commercial banks operating in Turkey, which is a rapidly developing country.