The effect of company characteristics and corporate governance on the sustainability reporting in Bangladesh

Economic, social and environmental sustainability reporting is of such importance in current times that United Nations has declared a separate resolution titled ‗Transforming Our World: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development‘. Bangladesh, as a signatory country of the resolution, has taken steps to accommodate action plans of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Companies listed on stock exchanges are considered as powerful instruments in bringing changes to the entire business environment of the country. Thus, it is important to examine the sustainability reporting behaviours of these companies to identify the influencing factors behind their reporting practices. This study is underpinned by the agency theory, legitimacy theory and stakeholder theory in explaining sustainability reporting. It examined company characteristics, including corporate posture, company visibility and stakeholder engagement, and the characteristics of corporate governance, namely, size, independence and meetings of board of directors and audit committee. Moreover, the study also looked at the moderation effect of industry regulation on the relationship between audit committee characteristics and sustainability reporting by companies. To conduct the research, 8 years‘ (2011-2018) annual reports of 189 companies had been sampled. An index of 651 items had been adopted from GRI Standards to evaluate the contents of the reports. The analysis results showed that- corporate posture, company visibility, stakeholder engagement, board size, audit committee independence and audit committee meetings had statistically significant roles in explaining the variability in the sustainability-related reporting by Bangladeshi companies. In addition, the presence of industry regulation has proved itself as a strong moderator in the relationship between audit committee characteristics and sustainability reporting. The findings of this research are expected to guide Bangladeshi industry regulators and contribute to the knowledge arena of sustainability reporting in developing countries.