World Benchmarking Alliance Content Analysis of Sustainability Reports in the MENA Region

Non-financial disclosures and sustainability information reported by corporations are becoming vital in the current global business environment. Non-financial information involves issues related to: sustainability; corporate responsibility; environmental, social, and governance (ESG) ethics; human capital; and environment, health, and safety (Phan et al. 2020, Sustainability 12(6):2324). Many important factors have led to the increased importance of such disclosures. The availability of information and enhanced awareness of users of reports made these disclosures highly relevant to society (Dienes et al. 2016, Sustain Account Manag Policy J 7(2):154–189). Environmental disasters such as oil and chemical spills (Rezaee 2016, J Account Lit 36:48–64), climate change (Ben-Amar and McIlkenny 2015, Bus Strateg Environ 24(8):704), product safety, and child labor scandals in China (Cheng et al. 2016, J Manag Gov 20(3):503–523) and many other similar events motivated firms to increase the quantity and quality of their corporate social responsibility reporting. To achieve the aims of the research, this paper is organized as follows. The introduction is an overview of sustainability reporting followed by a description of the WBA, its role and systems transformation and their relationship to SDGs; Section 2 lists the research questions followed by Sect. 4 describing the content analysis methodology used uniquely for this research including the coding system applied. Sections 5 and 6 include the findings, discussion, and conclusion of the research.