Title: A cross-cultural perspective of voluntary disclosure: Italian listed firms in the stakeholder global context

Authors: Daniela Coluccia; Eugenio D'Amico; Stefano Fontana; Silvia Solimene

Addresses: Department of Business and Law, University of Rome Sapienza, Via del Castro Laurenziano 9, 00161 Rome, Italy ' Department of Political Science, University of Roma Tre, Via Gabriello Chiabrera 199, 00154 Rome, Italy ' Department of Business and Law, University of Rome Sapienza, Via del Castro Laurenziano 9, 00161 Rome, Italy ' Department of Business and Law, University of Rome Sapienza, Via del Castro Laurenziano 9, 00161 Rome, Italy

Abstract: Through this paper, we empirically studied the presence, evolution, and determinants of voluntary disclosure with reference to the Italian Stock Exchange context in a multi-stakeholder approach. In particular, we identified eight stakeholders: customers, suppliers, competitors, institutions, community, environment, human capital and corporate governance, and financial lenders. For each one, we verified its disclosure in the following years: 2006, 2009, and 2012. As far as the presence and evolution of disclosure, our results show that there has been indeed an increase of disclosure, especially during the period 2009-2012. But it is still far from the level required by international organisations (Guidelines of the Global Reporting Initiative; Guidelines for ESG approved by the European Federation of Financial Analysts Societies; Guidelines developed as part of the CSR-SC project, prepared by the Italian Ministry of Labour and Social Policy). With reference to the determinants, we applied a mixed logit model for generalised binomial random variables that allowed us to see that the only variable that positively affects the disclosure of each stakeholder is the firm size.

Keywords: voluntary disclosure; stakeholder's theory; global listed companies; cross-cultural management.

DOI: 10.1504/EJIM.2017.085582

European Journal of International Management, 2017 Vol.11 No.4, pp.430 - 451

Received: 20 May 2016
Accepted: 09 Sep 2016
Published online: 31 Jul 2017 *

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