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\"One Report\" refers to an emerging trend in business taking place throughout the world where companies are going beyond separate reports for financial and nonfinancial (e.g., corporate social responsibility or sustainability) results and integrating both into a single integrated report. At the same time, they are also leveraging the Internet to provide more detailed results to all of their stakeholders and for improving their level of dialogue and engagement with them. Providing best practice examples from companies around the world, One Report shows how integrated reporting adds tremendous value to the company and all of its stakeholders, including shareholders, and also ultimately contributes to a sustainable society.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to verify the influence of the characteristics of boards of directors on the level of environmental disclosure by Brazilian companies. The board is one of the main mechanisms of corporate governance and its characteristics can influence the level of environmental disclosure. Design/methodology/approach The study used a sample of 152 companies listed on the São Paulo stock exchange, the BM&FBovespa. The level of environmental information was obtained by conducting a content analysis of company sustainability reports and websites. The generalized additive models based on negative binomial distribution were used to verify the influence of the characteristics of boards on environmental disclosure. Findings The results indicate that the number of independent board members had statistical significance, suggesting that board independence can improve the control of the administration and encourage greater environmental disclosure. The age variables showed that environmental disclosure increased on boards with average age up to 60 and then decreased. Originality/value It is expected that this study will contribute to the literature on corporate governance promotion by producing empiric data about the impacts of the characteristics of boards of directors on the level of environmental disclosure of companies that operate in a country with an emerging economy, Brazil. Another contribution may be related to the process of choosing board members because a board of directors must be composed of members with various characteristics to reduce the asymmetry of information and improve a company’s environmental disclosure policies.

Over 400,000 people across the Americas are thought to have been infected with Zika virus as a consequence of the 2015-2016 Latin American outbreak. Official government-led case count data in Latin America are typically delayed by several weeks, making it difficult to track the disease in a timely manner. Thus, timely disease tracking systems are needed to design and assess interventions to mitigate disease transmission. We combined information from Zika-related Google searches, Twitter microblogs, and the HealthMap digital surveillance system with historical Zika suspected case counts to track and predict estimates of suspected weekly Zika cases during the 2015-2016 Latin American outbreak, up to three weeks ahead of the publication of official case data. We evaluated the predictive power of these data and used a dynamic multivariable approach to retrospectively produce predictions of weekly suspected cases for five countries: Colombia, El Salvador, Honduras, Venezuela, and Martinique. Models that combined Google (and Twitter data where available) with autoregressive information showed the best out-of-sample predictive accuracy for 1-week ahead predictions, whereas models that used only Google and Twitter typically performed best for 2- and 3-week ahead predictions. Given the significant delay in the release of official government-reported Zika case counts, we show that these Internet-based data streams can be used as timely and complementary ways to assess the dynamics of the outbreak.

Purpose This study examines Italian banks’ alignment with the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS) established by EFRAG under the new Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD). Given banks’ potential as a driving force for sustainable practices, the aim is to evaluate their adherence to ESRS through recent nonfinancial statements. Design/methodology/approach A content analysis of recent nonfinancial statements published by Italian banks is performed to assess the alignment with ESRS standards. Additionally, a t-test was conducted to evaluate potential bank differences based on size, type and adherence to Global Report Initiative (GRI) standards. Findings The study finds moderate adherence among Italian banks to ESRS standards, with better alignment observed in larger institutions and those reporting GRI-aligned NFS. However, on average, Italian banks will need further adjustments to meet ESRS demands by 2025 fully. This highlights the significant preparatory work required in measurement and reporting for future compliance. Originality/value This study contributes to corporate reporting literature and adds insights into the banking sector. By focusing on ESRS compliance in Italian banks, the research underscores current gaps and guides regulatory bodies to support banks’ transition to new sustainability standards. These findings are pivotal as they precede the CSRD implementation deadline, offering both theoretical and practical implications for banks and policymakers. The findings may align with policymakers’ concerns, contributing to the ongoing work on the Omnibus Package aimed at streamlining reporting requirements.

This article addresses four hypotheses: (a) that corporate social responsibility (CSR) in Asia is not homogeneous but varies among countries, (b) that the variation is explained by stages of development, (c) that globalization enhances the adoption of CSR in Asia, and (d) that national business systems structure the profile of multinational corporations’ CSR. These hypotheses are investigated through analysis of Web site reporting of 50 companies in seven Asian countries: India, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, South Korea, Singapore, and Thailand. The article concludes that CSR does vary considerably among Asian countries but that this variation is not explained by development but by factors in the respective national business systems. It also concludes that multinational companies are more likely to adopt CSR than those operating solely in their home country but that the profile of their CSR tends to reflect the profile of the country of operation rather than the country of origin.

This paper provides a critical exploration of the journey metaphor promoted in much business discourse on sustainability—in corporate reports and advertisements, and in commentaries by business and professional associations. The portrayal of ‘sustainability as a journey’ evokes images of organizational adaptation, learning, progress, and a movement away from business-as-usual practices. The journey metaphor, however, masks the issue of towards what it is that businesses are actually, or even supposedly, moving. It is argued that in constructing ‘sustainability as a journey’, business commentators and other purveyors of corporate rhetoric can avoid becoming embroiled in debates about future desirable and sustainable states of affairs—states of affairs, perhaps, which would question the very raison d’être for some organizations and their outputs. ‘Sustainability as a journey’ invokes a subtle and powerful use of language that appears to seriously engage with elements of the discourse around sustainable development and sustainability, but yet at the same time, paradoxically, may serve to further reinforce business-as-usual.

This study aims to propose and empirically validate the application of a methodology for determining the business model (BM) dynamics associated with the implementation of selected circular economy (CE) strategies and the competitiveness of enterprises. The methodology is based on the assumptions of the attention-based view theory and legitimacy theory, which apply to the analysis of corporate communication. Key variables were identified and quantified using the verbal semantic indicators of BM and CE. The strength of the relationships between the variables was measured through correlation analysis, considering the selected moderating factors. The qualitative part of this study is based on empirical case studies of leading industrial enterprises operating in the European decorative and information systems manufacturing sectors. In the quantitative part, corporate reports were analysed and evaluated. Using the proposed IBMDRi index, the dynamics exhibited by the BMs of the studied industrial enterprises in the implementation of different CE strategies were monitored. These results indicate that BM dynamics can be higher when implementing lower-level CE strategies than higher-level CE strategies. The main scientific contribution of this study is the development and application of a quantitative methodology for IBMDRi determination. The methodology is applicable both in ongoing academic research in the fields of BM and CE and in the practitioner’s sphere for the purpose of designing BM, determining and comparing applied BMs, and implementing CE strategies across companies and industries.