Sustainability reporting and integrated reporting perspectives of Thai-listed companies

This paper aims to examine the reporting on sustainability and the level of compliance with international best practice, the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), aimed at improving communicative value to users.

Using a qualitative approach, comprising interviews with senior managers and analysis of disclosures in annual reports of Thai-listed companies, this paper contributes to the literature by providing evidence from an emerging market setting.

This study finds that sustainability reporting and integrated reporting perspectives of sampling companies are aiming to satisfy information needs to stakeholders and value creation to external users. Sustainability disclosures are related to some aspect of integrated reporting (IR) principles but not all.

The findings of this study are based on the results from interviews and annual reports of five business sectors, and may therefore, not reflect the sustainability reporting practices and/or annual reports of other Thai-listed companies. Also, there is limited reporting on future outlook.

The findings suggest that while sustainability and IR is being adopted very widely, in many countries, there is much variation in reporting practice especially in our emerging country context adopting a “comply or explain” approach.

For the Thai-listed companies, IR systems could be in their early stages and still have long way to go. The results can greatly encourage Thai-listed firms to incorporate integrated information in annual reports based on international standards thus building trust in capital markets and wider society.

The findings contribute to the literature on sustainability reporting and on the level of compliance with international best practice such as GRI by providing empirical analysis of non-financial disclosures within publicly available reporting in Thailand.