Analysis of Sustainability Reports and Quality of Information Disclosed of Top Brazilian Companies

The objective of this research is to examine the quality of information disclosed from a sample of Brazilian listedcompanies, using a multidimensional construct based on economic, environmental and social dimensions ofsustainability. The research design combines both quantitative and qualitative methods. The qualitative approachis used in the content analysis procedure and the quantitative is employed for statistical analysis. The targetpopulation consists of top 36 sustainable companies (ISE) and 24 with corporate governance practices (NM) in2011. We find that 37% of the companies achieved score above 0.5; 30% between 0.26 and 0.5 and 33% scoredbelow 0.25, being score zero the worst and one the best score. The best company scored 0.896 and the worst ofthe 60 companies scored 0.0167. Overall our statistical results confirm that ISE companies tend to disclose moreinformation and in a more adequate way than NM, and in general, the companies are reporting the content in allthe three dimensions with same quality level. Furthermore, companies from Infrastructure sector present betterquality content reported when compared to Service companies. We conclude that a good sustainability report isdirectly related to the good content in all the tree dimensions, regardless the economic sector and these reportsstill have a big room for improvement, which echoes within the literature analyzed. Companies need to disclosetheir information in a more integrated way, addressing sustainability issues under the scope of business strategy.