Influential Factors Behind SDGs Related-Disclosure in Large Portuguese Companies: An ISO Certification Approach

Abstract

In 2015, the United Nations approved the 2030 Agenda defining 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and 169 targets. Among those, the target 12.6 encourages companies to adopt sustainable practices and to integrate sustainability information into their reporting cycle. Thus, the aim of this paper is to understand whether ISO certification is a determinant factor in SDGs reporting. Standalone non-financial reports of the largest Portuguese companies were collected from 2016 until 2020, obtaining a total of 119 reports from 41 companies: 27 (22.7%) of the reports corresponds to non-certified companies and 92 (77.3%) to certified ones. Through a content analysis of the non-financial reports, an SDG disclosure Index (SDG_IND) was developed, to measure the level of disclosure on SDG. A set of panel data based on a Tobit regression analysis was applied, in STATA software, using the total of observations during the period 2016–2020, to verify if the variable ISO certification explains the level of SDGs disclosure. Contrary to our expectation, we did not find significant differences between certified and non-certified companies concerning the SDG-related disclosure. As far as we are aware, previous research in SDG has not considered the linkage with ISO certification. This article aims to explore this gap by investigating differences between certified and non-certified companies, regarding SDG disclosure, as whether ISO certification is a determinant factor of such disclosure.

Citation

Loureiro, A., Monteiro, S., Ribeiro, V. and Lemos, K. (2024), "Influential Factors Behind SDGs Related-Disclosure in Large Portuguese Companies: An ISO Certification Approach", Crowther, D. and Seifi, S. (Ed.) Society and Sustainability (Developments in Corporate Governance and Responsibility, Vol. 24), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 3-28. https://doi.org/10.1108/S2043-052320240000024001