Daniela Coluccia

Does environmental performance affect companies’ environmental disclosure?

Purpose – This study aims to verify the presence, evolution and determinants of voluntary environmental disclosure from companies listed on the Milan Stock Exchange. The authors examined documentation of listed firms from 2006 and 2009. These years immediately precede and follow Italian legislative decree n. 32/2007, which introduced (albeit on a voluntary basis) disclosure of environment-related company information. Design/methodology/approach – The authors’ approach utilizes multivariate regression analysis. The disclosure index of the years 2006 and 2009 represents the dependent variable. Independent variables include firm size, business industry, public shareholders, legislation and environmental performance. Findings – The results show positive effects on environmental disclosure related to legislative decree n. 32, the presence of government shareholdings in firms’ ownership structure, business industry and firm size. The interrelation between firm size and environmental performance shows that large...

Gender diversity on corporate boards: an empirical investigation of Italian listed companies

In recent years, there has been a growing consensus that gender diversity could improve the economic and social performance of companies—although progress has been painfully slow. In Italy, Law n. 120/2011 has required that since 2012 the composition of corporate boards must comprise at least 1/5 women and, from 2015, 1/3 women. Here, our primary aim was to study the proportion and the progression of female directors on the boards of Italian companies over the period between 2009–2014, among a sample of 60 companies listed on the Milan Stock Exchange. We additionally studied the characteristics of the women on the companies’ boards, in order to assemble a typical profile. To do this, we verified the boards’ compositions, the number of female directors, women’s power on the boards and their levels of education. Our results confirm that Italian law has produced significant effects on the composition of corporate boards. Moreover, we found that female directors are generally of Italian ethnic origin and have high levels of education, with a master’s, and sometimes, post-master’s degree. Furthermore, female directors are more likely to be professional figures with experience—the percentages of female directors with professional qualifications as well as the percentage of female directors on boards of other companies have consistently increased during the period mentioned. Our findings provide a descriptive analysis of female directors during the period between 2009–2014, thereby presenting a picture of gender equality in the Italian context. To our knowledge, this is the first study that has focused on examining gender equality among Italian-listed companies over such a long period. Future development of this research could examine in more depth the differences between male and female presence, behaviour and characteristics on boards, as well as how these issues affect the performance of firms. This article is published as part of a collection on the role of women in management and the workplace.

The Presence of Female Directors on Boards. An Empirical Investigation About Its Effects on CSR

In recent years, in European countries, there has been a growing consensus that gender diversity could improve the economic and social performance of companies. In some countries, the process was supported by the issuing of rules that provided for the mandatory presence of women on boards. Our first aim is to study the level and evolution of the presence of female directors on boards in the biggest European listed companies in the period 2012–2016. Secondly, according to previous literature, we want to verify if the presence of female directors positively affects companies’ CRS disclosure. We have selected for the period 2012–2016 the biggest European listed companies and for each one we verify the presence of women through the ratio between the number of women on the board and the total number of the board. We propose to carry out a descriptive analysis aimed at verifying the evolution of women on company boards, regarding presence and power. Furthermore, we want to test if the presence of female directors has positively affected the companies’ CRS disclosure. We will select the Environmental Social and Governance (ESG) indicator from Bloomberg database as the dependent variable and gender equality measures as explicative variables. Our first contribution is to do a descriptive analysis of the presence and the power of female directors in the sample. We want to provide a picture of the European situation regarding gender equality. The second contribution is to verify if the female directors have positively affected the companies’ CSR disclosure. We contribute to literature by providing a comparison among different European countries, to verify if the female presence has been growing only when forced by law. Secondly, we want to verify if the presence of female directors improves the level of CSR disclosure.

The influence of voluntary disclosure on the volatility of firms from a multi-stakeholder perspective

This paper is on the relationship between the level of voluntary disclosure related to many corporate stakeholders and the volatility of the market returns among a representative sample of Italian listed companies, in the years 2006, 2009 and 2012. The source of the disclosure is all the available mandatory and voluntary documents. We empirically tested the hypothesis that companies providing more disclosure show a lower volatility than do competitors. Our findings show that disclosure indexes all have a growing trend. Also, the evidence suggests that information disclosure may be useful to the market. Controlling a number of other factors, we found that industries that disclose more information show lower measures of stock volatility than others. We also have ascertained that customers, suppliers, communities, competitors and financial lenders and environment disclosure have a moderate effect on volatility, whereas institutions and human capital and corporate governance disclosure seem to have no effect on volatility.

A cross-cultural perspective of voluntary disclosure: Italian listed firms in the stakeholder global context

Through this paper, we empirically studied the presence, evolution, and determinants of voluntary disclosure with reference to the Italian Stock Exchange context in a multi-stakeholder approach. In particular, we identified eight stakeholders: customers, suppliers, competitors, institutions, community, environment, human capital and corporate governance, and financial lenders. For each one, we verified its disclosure in the following years: 2006, 2009, and 2012. As far as the presence and evolution of disclosure, our results show that there has been indeed an increase of disclosure, especially during the period 2009-2012. But it is still far from the level required by international organisations (Guidelines of the Global Reporting Initiative; Guidelines for ESG approved by the European Federation of Financial Analysts Societies; Guidelines developed as part of the CSR-SC project, prepared by the Italian Ministry of Labour and Social Policy). With reference to the determinants, we applied a mixed logit model for generalised binomial random variables that allowed us to see that the only variable that positively affects the disclosure of each stakeholder is the firm size.

Disclosure of corporate social responsibility: a comparison between traditional and digital reporting. an empirical analysis on italian listed companies

During recent years, there has been an increase in corporate social responsibility (following CSR) disclosure not only through sustainability reports but also through digital reporting. The purpose of our research is to study the CSR disclosure made by a sample of Italian listed companies. In particular, we built a disclosure index based on CSR disclosure in the sustainability report (traditional reporting) and a disclosure index based on CSR disclosure on the website (digital reporting). Our aim is to verify if there is a convergence between the two communication tools or whether companies prefer one of them. Specifically, we want to verify if digital reporting has really improved the quality and the level of voluntary disclosure. Our findings revealed that the CSR disclosures were generally shallow and unsystematic, indicating that online CSR reporting of our sample is still in infancy.