Environmental Reporting Practices in German EMAS- registered Organisations: In-depth Content Analysis
(2022) EKHS34 20221Department of Economic History
- Abstract
- Environmental standards are an important part of corporate sustainability efforts. According to signalling theory, they provide relevant information about a company’s efforts, while institutional theory assumes that firms use them to mitigate societal pressures by selectively disclosing information. The European Eco-Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS) is a widely applied example of a voluntary environmental standard. This paper aims to uncover insights into the application of the standard in the highly relevant case of Germany. A new framework was constructed to conduct a content analysis of environmental reports combining requirements from literature and the standard itself. The framework was applied to a sample of 81 reports from German... (More)
- Environmental standards are an important part of corporate sustainability efforts. According to signalling theory, they provide relevant information about a company’s efforts, while institutional theory assumes that firms use them to mitigate societal pressures by selectively disclosing information. The European Eco-Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS) is a widely applied example of a voluntary environmental standard. This paper aims to uncover insights into the application of the standard in the highly relevant case of Germany. A new framework was constructed to conduct a content analysis of environmental reports combining requirements from literature and the standard itself. The framework was applied to a sample of 81 reports from German firms that recently registered with the standard. The manual in-depth analysis of the reports was followed by statistical testing to uncover patterns in the data collected. The results suggest that firms use reporting in a more encompassing way than previous studies suggested. Especially the inclusion of core indicators was satisfying and a learning experience could be detected from the inclusion of other items. The only significant difference between types of firms found suggests higher core indicator coverage in the manufacturing sector. The outlook on firm performance was not able to find an association between report quality and firm performance. Overall, the study supports the assumptions of signalling theory over institutional theory and includes important trajectories for research and policymakers on how to improve the standard. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
http://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/9096300
- author
- Westarp, Isabel LU
- supervisor
- organization
- course
- EKHS34 20221
- year
- 2022
- type
- H1 - Master's Degree (One Year)
- subject
- keywords
- EMAS, Environmental Reporting, German firms, Content Analysis, Indicators
- language
- English
- id
- 9096300
- date added to LUP
- 2022-08-01 08:50:44
- date last changed
- 2022-08-01 08:51:15
@misc{9096300,
abstract = {{Environmental standards are an important part of corporate sustainability efforts. According to signalling theory, they provide relevant information about a company’s efforts, while institutional theory assumes that firms use them to mitigate societal pressures by selectively disclosing information. The European Eco-Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS) is a widely applied example of a voluntary environmental standard. This paper aims to uncover insights into the application of the standard in the highly relevant case of Germany. A new framework was constructed to conduct a content analysis of environmental reports combining requirements from literature and the standard itself. The framework was applied to a sample of 81 reports from German firms that recently registered with the standard. The manual in-depth analysis of the reports was followed by statistical testing to uncover patterns in the data collected. The results suggest that firms use reporting in a more encompassing way than previous studies suggested. Especially the inclusion of core indicators was satisfying and a learning experience could be detected from the inclusion of other items. The only significant difference between types of firms found suggests higher core indicator coverage in the manufacturing sector. The outlook on firm performance was not able to find an association between report quality and firm performance. Overall, the study supports the assumptions of signalling theory over institutional theory and includes important trajectories for research and policymakers on how to improve the standard.}},
author = {{Westarp, Isabel}},
language = {{eng}},
note = {{Student Paper}},
title = {{Environmental Reporting Practices in German EMAS- registered Organisations: In-depth Content Analysis}},
year = {{2022}},
}