Environmental disclosure and Eco-innovation interrelation. The case of Spanish firms

Abstract

The actual drivers of companies’ environmental disclosure have been widely studied and yet with no conclusive results. Most literature looks for the link between environmental performance and environmental disclosure, as reflection of the company instrumental or normative approach to sustainability. However, over the last decade, a growing number of companies are joining the ranks of eco-innovation, focusing their strategy on environmental innovation, and paving the way for new approaches to environmental disclosure. The main objective of this paper is to assess if eco-innovation in companies can be acting as a non-intended driver to disclosure of environmental reporting, in connection to the Resources Based View theory, and the search for competitive advantage. An extensive research has been undertaken with Spanish eco-innovative companies, evaluating their environmental disclosure standards from a two-fold perspective: managers’ perception and public available environmental reporting. The findings bring in interesting implications about the mismatch between managers’ perception of their environmental disclosure and accounting standards, and the actual disclosure of environmental reporting made available to their stakeholders. Within the studied sample, eco-innovation appears to be a driver for environmental disclosure from an inside-out approach encompassed in the RBV theory, where environmental information is primarily meant for managerial purposes and only secondarily to inform stakeholders.

Keywords

• Environmental disclosure
• Environmental reporting
• Eco-Innovation
• Managers’ perception
• Resources Based View (RBV)