Acta Univ. Agric. Silvic. Mendelianae Brun. 2020, 68(3), 625-636 | DOI: 10.11118/actaun202068030625

Non-Financial Reporting of Industrial Corporations - A Czech Case Study

Jaroslav Sedláček
Department of Finance, Faculty of Economics and Administration, Masaryk University in Brno, Lipová 41a, 602 00 Brno, Czech Republic

Scientific research and studies from recent years point to the growing interest of large multinational corporations in publishing reports that inform the public not only about their performance, but also about their behavior in terms of social responsibility and long-term sustainability. These are not only effects in the context of their success, but also the negative impacts of their environmental, social and administrative activities. Although corporate responsibility reporting integrating financial and non-financial information is becoming a standard practice, these approaches have not yet been investigated or published in the Czech region. Therefore, the aim of the research was to determine how the new quality of reporting is perceived by Czech industrial corporations. Data for empirical research were excerpted from reports published in 2018. To verify the generally perceived assumption of a positive correlation between the size of corporations and the quality of their reports, respectively between reporting quality and corporate performance, eight hypotheses have been formulated. The Chi-Square independence test was used to confirm or refute the hypotheses. The tests confirmed a significant dependence of reporting quality on the size of the corporation. A positive correlation was also found between quality of report and performance, but the expected negative correlation between indebtedness could not be demonstrated.

Keywords: non-financial information, corporate social responsibility, corporate annual report, environmental social and governance reporting, global reporting
Grants and funding:

This research and resulting contribution was funded by Internal Grant Agency of Masaryk University, Faculty of Economics and Administration. Grant No.: MUNI/A/1110/2018 "Non-financial information and its relevance for measuring performance".

Received: February 23, 2020; Accepted: May 22, 2020; Published: July 1, 2020  Show citation

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Sedláček, J. (2020). Non-Financial Reporting of Industrial Corporations - A Czech Case Study. Acta Universitatis Agriculturae et Silviculturae Mendelianae Brunensis, 68(3), 625-636. doi: 10.11118/actaun202068030625
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