Conference Programme

This paper examines how corporations disclose their biodiversity impacts and why biodiversity accountability often remains elusive. Using content analysis of 146 sustainability reports and a comparison sample from Forbes Global 2000, over 5 years, we classify disclosures into mentions, actions, and outcomes and identify a substantial gap between communication and conservation outcomes. Drawing on institutional theory, we introduce symbolic inertia (the persistence of superficial disclosures under pressure), latent stakeholder pressures (diffuse expectations that spur mentions over actions), and enforcement interplay (the alignment of coercive, normative, and mimetic forces). These illuminate why biodiversity reporting stalls and where outcome aligned reporting emerges. Biodiversity reporting lags climate, water, and other themes in both prevalence and measurable outcomes. We argue that sector specific, flexible metrics embedded within mainstream ESG routines, coupled with cross sector collaboration and assurance, can shift biodiversity reporting from rhetoric to measurable conservation outcomes.

Do disclosure decisions affect knowledge spillovers independently of R&D investment? R&D subsidies encourage innovation; disclosure policies determine whether knowledge becomes public or remains secret. We show this distinction matters fundamentally for environmental innovation. Using disclosure quality-weighted environmental patents and regulatory enforcement instruments, we find clean technology disclosure generates substantial spillovers to peer firms while disclosing firms capture essentially none of these benefits. Traditional innovation shows no disclosure effects beyond R&D investment. Process-based environmental technologies drive these results: they cannot be reverse-engineered, making patent disclosure critical for knowledge diffusion. Clean knowledge spillovers reduce emissions by 5%. Policy makers face two problems: underinvestment in innovation and under-disclosure of existing knowledge. Current climate policy addresses only the first, leaving disclosure as a critical but underused lever.

This paper examines the use of environmental and social (E&S) clauses in supply contracts as an important tool for corporate customers to monitor and influence suppliers’ E&S practices. Using a hand-collected sample of supply contracts, we find a substantial proportion of contracts include clauses mandating compliance, disclosure, inspection, and training related to suppliers’ E&S practices. Customer reputational concerns, relationship-specific investments, and regulatory pressures significantly influence the inclusion of these clauses. Moreover, E&S clauses more directly associated with customer monitoring, specifically inspection and training requirements, are negatively related to suppliers’ future E&S incidents. This association is more pronounced for corporate customers with higher E&S exposure, indicating that the benefits of proactive supplier monitoring through E&S clauses are greater for customers with elevated reputational risks. Overall, our evidence supports the view that E&S clauses in supply contracts serve as an important mechanism for customers to exert influence on suppliers’ E&S practices.

While exceeding financial performance targets typically garners positive investor responses, the market’s reaction to above-target environmental performance (ATEP)—firms surpassing their self-set pollution reduction goals—remains theoretically ambiguous. This study addresses this gap through an abductive, exploratory analysis of U.S. publicly traded firms from 2007 to 2019. We find investors largely ignore ATEP under routine conditions. However, during pollution incidents, ATEP backfires—firms with higher ATEP face harsher market penalties. The negative effect is amplified for firms held by socially responsible investors and those with executive-certified ATEP disclosures. Additionally, penalized firms subsequently reduce reported ATEP and increase target disclosure opacity. These findings reveal context-dependent investor attention to environmental performance and highlight a dynamic feedback loop between market reactions and corporate environmental governance, offering implications for managers and policymakers.

As jurisdictions around the world diverge in their adoption of sustainability reporting regimes and materiality approaches, it remains unclear how these institutional features jointly shape disclosure transparency. We experimentally examine how reporting regimes (voluntary vs. mandatory) and materiality approaches (financial materiality vs. double materiality) interact to influence corporate managers’ transparency in disclosing negative but material sustainability information. We find that mandatory reporting increases transparency only under double materiality, but not under financial materiality. Furthermore, under voluntary reporting, financial materiality leads to more transparent disclosure than double materiality, an effect that attenuates under mandatory reporting. These effects are driven by differences in accountability structures across materiality approaches and reporting regimes, which together shape whether managers engage in symbolic versus substantive accountability actions that in turn affect disclosure transparency. Our findings have implications for regulators seeking to enhance the effectiveness of sustainability reporting requirements.