Rising Eminence of Sustainability Reporting – Evidence from India

Abstract

This paper is an attempt to examine the sustainability reporting prac tices of the top 40 public & private Indian companies (as per the ET-500 list). Using NVivo software, each company’s overall disclosure index is calculated on seven identified parameters. The study is conducted by applying content analysis on the past two-year’s annual reports of all the companies. To identify substantial variation in public and private company’s disclosure norms, the Mann-Whitney U test was applied for statistical analysis. Results indicate a significant differ ence in disclosure of environmental, human rights, social performance, society, product responsibility, and six capitals. Public sector companies are found to be more inclined in societal disclosures while the private sector companies are more inclined towards social responsibility. Environmental disclosures exhibit higher values for public companies and social performance indicators display higher values for private sector companies.