The disclosure of sustainability reports in Latin America: a comparative study

Abstract

This work aims to comparatively analyze the social and environmental information disseminated by Latin American companies in their reports. A content analysis was made of the social and environmental information disclosed by a sample of 226 organizations, in the period from 2004 to 2009, categorized by country, company, industry, and year. Voluntary guidelines by The Global Reporting Initiative were used as a guide to analyze the content of annual reports, sustainability reports and 20F Forms, made available by organizations on their websites or by the stock exchanges on which they negotiate their actions. The results reveled that most trading companies in the region do not provide social and environmental information in their annual reports or specific reports on the subject, however, companies established in Brazil are most emphasis this issue. Regarding the development and dissemination of social-environmental information, it was noted that the annual report has become the main source used for this purpose, followed by the sustainability report, published as part of the annual report or as a specific publication.