The quality of corporate reporting: The United Nations sustainable development goals

Abstract

The current study examines the attributes of the sustainability reports produced by public listed companies in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). This is achieved through the adoption of the legitimacy theory (LT) perspective to determine how the reports represent strategic development goals. Global Reporting Initiative (GRI Standards) disclosure standards have been used as a benchmark to assess the quality of UAE companies’ sustainable report in respect of Sustainable Development Goal 11 (SDG 11). We adopt Tsalis, Malamateniou, Koulouriotis, and Nikolaou (2020) methodology in scoring the disclosure quality of SGD 11. 130 sustainable reports were analyzed, it was found that there is a poor overall quality of corporate sustainability reports, not least in respect of SDG 11. There were no major changes to SDG 11, with managers tending to function symbolically in terms of their roles in the level and quality of SDG 11-related disclosures. Thus, the UAE corporate reporting is not significantly influenced by the UAE vision 2030 Agenda (United Nations [UN], 2015).