The Current Environmental Strategy Reporting Model: What can be Learned from Corporate Reports?

This paper explores the information on environmental strategy. Our interest is to understand whether corporate reports are useful to assess a firm’s environmental performance. We developed an empirical investigation of annual reports and social reports of large public firms. Using content analysis, our findings show major differences among companies in sensitive, manufacturing/service and financial sectors in terms of: integration of environmental issues into corporate reporting model; disclosure of environmental information. We offer some relevant insights on the overlooked relation between environmental disclosure and environmental performance and on the predominant use of environmental qualitative and/or non financial measures. The study shows that there is: a lack of consideration paid to the relationship between environmental strategies and environmental performance; high variability and limited standardization in environmental practices. Consequently the comparability of environmental performance is very low. Furthermore, integrating theoretical and empirical findings, we suggest some implications to improve environmental disclosure practices.