Qualidade dos relatórios de sustentabilidade: uma análise de empresas na América Latina

Abstract

The active participation of the private sector in Sustainable Development actions has been considered an imperative and no longer a choice for companies. In this sense, in addition to acting, organizations need to communicate, in a satisfactory way, their actions in order to obtain legitimacy towards their stakeholders. Thus, this study aims to analyze the quality of reports on sustainability actions by the largest companies in Latin America, identifying the quality of these communications as well as what internal and external factors influence this quality. Therefore, this study is divided into two parts. In the first one, reports were obtained for the years 2019 and 2020 of the 100 largest companies operating in Latin America. These reports were read and, their quality was measured using a Sustainability Matrix (MDS) and a five-point scoring system. In the second part, a quantitative analysis was performed using six Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) linear regression models. In the models, the presence or not in Controversial Sectors, the Productive Capacity of the host countries and the National Corporate Social Responsibility Index of the companies' country of origin were considered as External Factors. As Internal Factors, the existence of some external assurance and the Female Participation in leadership positions were considered. The results indicate that there is a lot of room for improvement in the quality of the reports. The use of the Integrated Report, a greater number of pages and the adoption of other norms and standards, such as the Global Compact, SASB and SDG together with the norms of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) appear to positively impact the quality of reports. Concerning the external factors that influence the total quality score of the reports, it was found that companies that operate in controversial sectors, and whose origin are from countries with better National Corporate Social Responsibility Indexes, had a positive and significant relationship. Among the internal factors, the presence of external verification was highly significant.