Title: Corporate sustainability reporting in the banking sector of Bangladesh: an appraisal of the G4 of the Global Reporting Initiative

Authors: Md. Nazrul Islam; Mohammad Ashraful Ferdous Chowdhury

Addresses: Department of Business Administration, Shahjalal University of Science & Technology, Sylhet, Bangladesh ' Department of Business Administration, Shahjalal University of Science & Technology, Sylhet, Bangladesh

Abstract: Corporate reporting is mostly confined to statutory financial information; however, the additional reporting of voluntary information such as corporate environmental, social and governance information has received much attention in the recent years. With the aim of preparing a comprehensive framework and guidelines for sustainable reporting, G4 of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) was established for all organisations. The present study attempts to evaluate the sustainability disclosure practices in the banking sector of Bangladesh with considering G4 guidelines. The content analysis is employed for assessing the level of disclosures using annual report of 2014 on 30 listed banks. The result reveals that the banking sector is disclosing general information (66%) more than the specific aspects (17%). The overall disclosure level is at a poor level (36%) in terms of the sustainability approach of G4. This study suggests the banking sector should adopt G4 and revise reporting practices in line with GRI.

Keywords: sustainable development; G4; content analysis; banking industry; Bangladesh; sustainability reporting; GRI; Global Reporting Initiative; sustainability disclosure; content analysis; annual reports; bank reporting.

DOI: 10.1504/IJGE.2016.081903

International Journal of Green Economics, 2016 Vol.10 No.3/4, pp.252 - 278

Received: 18 Dec 2015
Accepted: 08 Dec 2016
Published online: 30 Jan 2017 *

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