Sources of stakeholder salience in the responsible investment movement: why do investors sign the Principles for Responsible Investment?

Since its inception in 2006, the United Nations-backed Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) have grown to over 1300 signatories representing over $45 trillion. This growth is not slowing down. In this paper, we argue that there is a set of attributes which make the PRI salient as a stakeholder and its claim to sign the six PRI important to institutional investors. We use Mitchell et al.’s (Acad Manag Rev 22:853–886, 1997) theoretical framework of stakeholder salience, as extended by Gifford (J Bus Eth 92:79–97, 2010). We use as evidence confidential data from the annual survey of signatories carried out by the PRI in a 5-year period between 2007 and 2011. The findings highlight pragmatic and organizational legitimacy, normative and utilitarian power, and management values as the attributes that contribute most to the salience of the PRI as a stakeholder.

Does stakeholder pressure influence corporate GHG emissions reporting? Empirical evidence from Europe

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to seek to shed light on the practice of incomplete corporate disclosure of quantitative Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and investigates whether external stakeholder pressure influences the existence, and separately, the completeness of voluntary GHG emissions disclosures by 431 European companies. Design/methodology/approach – A classification of reporting completeness is developed with respect to the scope, type and reporting boundary of GHG emissions based on the guidelines of the GHG Protocol, Global Reporting Initiative and the Carbon Disclosure Project. Logistic regression analysis is applied to examine whether proxies for exposure to climate change concerns from different stakeholder groups influence the existence and/or completeness of quantitative GHG emissions disclosure. Findings – From 2005 to 2009, on average only 15 percent of companies that disclose GHG emissions report them in a manner that the authors consider complete. Results of regression analyses suggest that external stakeholder pressure is a determinant of the existence but not the completeness of emissions disclosure. Findings are consistent with stakeholder theory arguments that companies respond to external stakeholder pressure to report GHG emissions, but also with legitimacy theory claims that firms can use carbon disclosure, in this case the incomplete reporting of emissions, as a symbolic act to address legitimacy exposures. Practical implications – Bringing corporate GHG emissions disclosure in line with recommended guidelines will require either more direct stakeholder pressure or, perhaps, a mandated disclosure regime. In the meantime, users of the data will need to carefully consider the relevance of the reported data and develop the necessary competencies to detect and control for its incompleteness. A more troubling concern is that stakeholders may instead grow to accept less than complete disclosure. Originality/value – The paper represents the first large-scale empirical study into the completeness of companies’ disclosure of quantitative GHG emissions and is the first to analyze these disclosures in the context of stakeholder pressure and its relation to legitimation.