Quality of environmental disclosure by multi-national oil companies: a corporate governance perspective.

Abstract

Over the past few years, concern about the issue of environmental sustainability has increased considerably. Closely linked to this concern is the growing disquiet over the increasing pervasiveness of multi-national companies, especially oil companies, in shaping global politics and economics. Consequently, increased awareness about the environment has led to calls for better management of global resources and for ways in which to make the corporations that benefit the most from the exploitation of these resources, more socially accountable and environmentally responsible. The oil industry continues to be at the centre of this debate. Despite the industry’s immense contributions to society, it is regarded as a multi-national company with a questionable record of environmental sustainability practices and a low level of accountability and transparency. In an attempt to respond to these criticisms, oil companies are now producing corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports; voluntary reports containing disclosure about their social and environmental sustainability activities. Against a theoretical background in which reasons were adduced to explain the motivation for the voluntary corporate disclosure phenomenon and a discussion of the oil industry’s pivotal role in the environmental sustainability debate, this dissertation evaluated the quality of the environmental CSR disclosure contained in the annual report of thirty- four multinational oil companies. The evaluation was benchmarked against the environmental reporting requirements of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), the only internationally recognised CSR reporting standards. In addition, using regression analysis, this dissertation considered the impact of selected corporate characteristics on the quality of individual corporate environmental report. Finally, the dissertation looked at the corporate governance implications of the quality of the industry’s environmental reporting.