Unveiling redundancy in environmental, social, and governance reporting framework in India: an exploratory study

Purpose - This study aims to investigate redundant information in mandatory non-financial reports (NFRs) demanded by regulators, focusing primarily on overlapping disclosures in a new Indian sustainability reporting (SR) framework. Design/methodology/approach - The study sample comprised NIFTY100 listed entities that published SR voluntarily during 2021–2022. The authors used content analysis and cosine similarity techniques to conceptually compare redundancy in SR disclosures with non-financial disclosures. Findings - The findings reveal an information overlap in SR disclosure with other NFRs disclosures. The disclosures of Directors’ Report have higher cosine similarity scores at the firm level with SR, followed by the Management Discussion and Analysis report, Corporate Governance report and Corporate Social Responsibility report. The additional analysis reveals that qualitative disclosures and disclosures comprising governance factors overlap more in SR. Practical implications - Policymakers should look to establish relevant disclosure guidelines in the SR system, and thereby, shed light on fundamental issues to enhance future SR framework reforms. Social implications - The study highlight the need for integration and amendment in the disclosure guidelines of NFRs to improve the overall transparency of the reports. Originality/value - Previous studies have examined the redundancy in annual reports and SRs from the point of view of overlapping information. To the best author’s knowledge, this is possibly among the first studies to offer insights into the repetition of disclosures required by regulators in statutory NFRs based on environmental, social, and governance factors through the lenses of the institutional theory.