Considerations Regarding Correlated Analysis between Comply or Explain Declaration and Non-Financial Reports

Abstract

Corporate governance still remains a topic of great interest to both researchers and practitioners, as a result of the on-going challenges that companies face. The current economic and pandemic context and the need for a sustainable development bring new requirements to the governance, imposing a rethinking of strategy and business processes. The new challenges require consolidated implementations of corporate governance. The purpose of this study is to analyze how the companies’ alignment to the governance requirements is reflected in “comply or explain” declarations as well as in the non-financial reports and emphasize some identified vulnerabilities, most of them being determined by the obvious limitation of transparency and the attempt of minimizing the importance of some nonconformities. The objective of the study is to identify the barriers occurred in a solid corporate governance implementation and sustainable development of companies, as these aspects are emphasized in the reports of companies from various industries listed on Bucharest Stock Exchange. The companies’ governance consolidation process, on all its pillars, encompasses the social responsibility coordinate, and remains for the Romanian companies a process that must be accelerated and assumed entirely. The conclusions of this study offer important reflection points and might represent a solid basis for improvement of corporate governance and implicitly of stakeholders` benefits.

Keywords

• comply or explain declaration; bucharest stock exchange; non-financial reporting; romania; corporate governance