آشکارسازی محیطی و ویژگی مالی شرکت: مطالعه موردی دانمارک

ABSTRACT Environmental Disclosure and Financial Characteristics of the Firm: The Case of Denmark

ENVIRONMENTAL RESOURCES ARE SCARCE. AS THEIR EMPLOYMENT AFFECTS SOCIAL WELFARE, THEIR EMPLOYMENT NEEDS to be accounted for (Martin-Ortega risks, and performance because the dissemination of information is part of the managerial decision-making process; the outcome of this decision-making process is more likely to be accepted by affected stakeholders et al., 2011). Companies need to disclose their environmental targets, if they have been included in this process through communication of information relevant to their interests (Solomon and Lewis, 2002). Moreover, the dissemination of environmental information reduces perceived uncertainty by providers of capital; capital can then be accessed at lower required rates of return (Cowton and Thompson, 2000; Plumlee et al., 2010). Dissemination of environmental information is a process of communication that aims at shaping the stakeholders’ views and expectations of the company’s environmental responsibility (Gray et al., 2010). In this analysis, we see that an index of environmental disclosure, focusing on aspects that are quantifiable and relevant to stakeholders, can be a principal apparatus in the assessment of corporate communication. By measuring environmental disclosure in companies with diverse financial structure, size, and performance, this paper aims at identifying disclosure practices and their cross-sectional variations across diverse corporate organizations.

While information on environmental elements of corporate identity can be disseminated through a variety of media, we focus on corporate websites. Our investigation on the extent and the financial determinants of environmental disclosure is focused on corporate websites for two main reasons. The first is that environmental reporting on the Internet is a fundamental technology for organizational self-representation and the pursuit of corporate legitimacy (Cho and Roberts, 2010). The second is the plethora of evidence that the extent of environmental information that is disclosed on corporate websites is larger than the amount of information that is disclosed in annual reports (Chatterjee and Mir, 2008; Bolivar, 2009). Most corporate websites of (listed) companies include the annual report as part of disclosed material. Moreover, compared to hard-copy reports whose content is largely based on regulation, information that is disseminated on corporate websites is more customized to reflect the identity of a company and the nexus of its stakeholders. Furthermore, the frequent updating of online information, the increased and unmediated interactivity between suppliers of environmental information and the stakeholders that use it, as well as the speed of information dissemination make corporate websites more pertinent to the analysis of environmental disclosure.

While previous national case studies focused mostly on markets where the emphasis on the environmental effect of business activities is in an early stage (Zhang et al., 2007; Monteiro and Aibar-Guzmán 2010), this paper discusses disclosure in a market where sustainable development is a key principle of economic activity. We place our emphasis on Denmark and, having researched the prior work in this field, we believe that this is the first paper to map the cross-sectional variations of environmental reporting practices of Danish corporations. We focus on Denmark because sustainable development is a principal pillar of the Danish government’s strategy for growth (Danish Government, 2002). Sustainable development also constitutes a key element for the Danish Government and the private sector’s strategy for competitiveness (Danish Council for Sustainable Business Development, 2008; Danish Government, 2010).