Critical Review and Research Design: Companies’ Environmental Reports and Performance

This literature review critically looks at the issue of quality and quantity of companies’ environmental reports linked to their actual environmental performance. According to Hughes et al., the level of public concern about the environment was very high during the early 1990s. Adams also emphasises that the importance of ethical reporting by companies has increased since the mid-1980s. O’Dwyer in his research on Irish companies points out the dependence of corporations’ existence on the support from the wider society. He discusses the fact that corporations in many Western capitalist economies in return to provided substantial economic benefits for communities get access to employees, natural resources, infrastructure, customers and legitimacy from the wider society. The analysed set of four academic papers provides knowledge on the perception of stakeholders and companies on disclosure and non-disclosure of environmental information. First, Hughes’s (2001) content analyses of annual and environmental report disclosures of 51 United States manufacturing firms shows the differences of these disclosures between companies, which environmental activities were rated poor, good or mixed. Next, Adams’s research (2004) on reporting-performance portrayal gap discusses the problems of the level of accountability and completeness of environmental reports, as well as the necessity to include stakeholders in the reporting process. The ideas about motives for Corporate Social Disclosure, which lie inside and outside the legitimacy theory, are provided by O’Dwyer’s in-depth interviews with 29 senior managers from 27 Irish public limited companies (2002). In addition to providing knowledge, the investigation of these common themes and ideas within the previous research will allow to understand the problem with companies’ environmental reports and performance, and help to identify the further research.