TRSM Research Seminar by Dr. Ranjita Singh

Title: Sustainability Reporting: Fad or Routine? Predicting Likelihood of Sustainability Reporting Among the Largest Firms.

Description: How do we know if firms’ sustainability initiatives will be enduring or short-lived? A company’s board has discretion over the comprehensiveness over their sustainability related disclosures (Fuente et al, 2017). These disclosures help in developing the reputation of the company while also mitigating uncertainty about their position on economic, social and environmental issues. The Board represents the interests of stakeholders and it is their duty to ensure that the company’s actions benefit the different stakeholders (Kaplan, 2001; Krechovska and Prochazkpva, 2014).

However, past research studying the impact of Board structure and the level of sustainability initiatives across the three pillars of sustainability- economic, environmental and social- is unequivocal. Moreover, are there differences depending upon the type of industry being studied? While some research suggests that company boards are not always positively linked to CSR disclosures (Prado-Lorenzo and Garcia Sanchez, 2010), others (Fuente et al; 2017) find that board independence and directors’ diversity results in greater transparency on sustainability initiatives of firms as specified by the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI). By focusing on the top 200 corporations of the S&P/TSX composite index in Canada, we study companies that have the resources to engage in sustainability reporting and are generally considered to be at the forefront when thinking about acting sustainably.  

We analyze the influence of particular characteristics of a board (board size, independent directors on the board and board diversity in terms of gender) on a company’s likelihood of engaging in sustainability reporting. Moreover, whether or not the firm has already engaged in corporate social responsibility initiatives as evidenced from their engagement with charitable causes shows the importance, they give to addressing social causes and by extension the level of sustainability initiatives that they undertake. By doing so we believe that we will be able predict which firms’ have a higher likelihood of an enduring and deep-rooted sustainability related program.

Speaker Bio: Ranjita Singh  is the coordinator of the BSM program at the Ted Rogers School of Management. She is part of the Entrepreneurship & Strategy Department at TRSM. Her research involves studying corporate governance, new industries and impact of business incubators. She has published research on net zero housing, corporate governance and sustainability reporting of Canadian Corporations, Electric Vehicles adoption in Ontario etc.