Frank Schiemann

Organizations, Climate Change, and Transparency: Reviewing the Literature on Carbon Disclosure

The debate surrounding climate change often centers on companies’ contributions to global warming, which has led to an increase in the importance of carbon disclosure. We evaluate the current state of related research and identify its trends, coherences, and caveats via a systematic literature review. Sociopolitical theories of disclosure, economic theories of disclosure, and institutional theory serve as the main theoretical anchors for our exploration. The existing research emphasizes the determinants and, to a lesser extent, effects of carbon disclosure, as well as the associated regulatory issues such as voluntary versus mandatory disclosure. Additionally, we discuss related topics, such as assurance and risks. We find that a large portion of scholarly work provides no link to theory, despite the fact that such links can be identified, for example, from the financial disclosure literature. Finally, we report on the established knowledge and examine the need for additional research.

Stakeholder Relevance for Reporting - Explanatory Factors of Carbon Disclosure

Although stakeholder theory is widely accepted in environmental disclosure research, empirical evidence about the role of stakeholders in firms’ disclosure is still scarce. The authors address this issue for a setting of carbon disclosure. Our international sample comprises the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) Global 500, S&P 500, and FTSE 350 reports from 2008 to 2011, resulting in a total of 1,120 firms with 3,631 firm-year observations. The authors apply Tobit regressions to analyze the relationship between carbon disclosure and the relevance of the following stakeholder groups: government, general public, media, employees, and customers. Our results confirm that in addition to carbon performance, all stakeholders are associated with carbon disclosure. Only one stakeholder group (government) acts as a moderator for the relationship between carbon performance and carbon disclosure. Furthermore, the authors find that carbon performance but not the affiliation to a carbon-intensive industry acts as a moderator between stakeholder relevance and carbon disclosure.

The relationship between recognised intangible assets and voluntary intellectual capital disclosure

Purpose - – The capitalisation of intangible investments is discussed controversially in the financial accounting literature. International accounting standards are concerned with this issue and generally demand more intellectual capital to be recognised on the face of the balance sheet. If investors and analysts already gather monetary information about intangible assets from the financial report and find such information useful, then the necessity to complement such information with voluntary intellectual capital disclosure will diminish. Accordingly, there should be an association between recognised intangible assets and voluntary intellectual capital disclosure. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach - – The authors analyse the voluntary disclosure of 264 investor conference and roadshow presentations of German DAX 30 firms in the year 2001, 2003, 2005, and 2007. The authors apply regression models to analyse the association between recognition of intangible assets and voluntary intellectual capital disclosure and control for other determinants of voluntary disclosure. Findings - – The authors find that the magnitude of recognised intangible assets is significantly and negatively associated with the quantity and quality of voluntary intellectual capital disclosure. The authors show that this association is mainly driven by goodwill accounting. In more detailed analyses we find different directions (positive, negative and insignificant) of this relationship for different categories of intellectual capital. Research limitations/implications - – Future studies on voluntary intellectual capital disclosure need to consider recognised intangible assets as a determinant to avoid omitted variable problems. Practical implications - – The authors provide descriptive evidence about voluntary intellectual capital disclosure practice of Germany’s largest firms. Originality/value - – The paper provides primary evidence on the association between recognised intangible assets and voluntary intellectual capital disclosure.

Carbon Disclosure, Contextual Factors, and Information Asymmetry: The Case of Physical Risk Reporting

Abstract The paper focusses on the reporting of climate change-related physical risks. Drawing on data from the CDP questionnaire for 717 European companies over three years (2011–2013) we find that information asymmetry is generally smaller when firms report about their physical risks. Furthermore, we find that reporting of a higher exposure to physical risks is associated with lower information asymmetry for firms falling under the regulation of the EU Emissions Trading Scheme, whereas for other firms the direction of the relationship reverses. We can rule out that our results are driven by other climate change-related risk disclosures and by disclosures about opportunities arising from climate change. This study is not only relevant because it attests the materiality of climate change-related physical risks. Moreover, we show how a contextual factor – in this study: whether a company falls under climate change-related regulation – moderates the direction of the relationship between reported information and information asymmetry.

Nonfinancial materiality versus materiality of non-financial information

With the rise of non-financial disclosures, companies face the challenge of identifying which sus-tainability-related information is material and therefore should be disclosed. In accordance with t...