Martin Botha, Hester Spies
Abstract
Against the backdrop of a growing population and increased water scarcity, this paper took on an integrative perspective to determine whether the concepts of integrated thinking and integrated reporting were associated with improved water disclosures in the food, beverage and tobacco industry in terms of the materiality concept. Non-probability, purposive sampling was used to select firms from the Johannesburg Security Exchange in South Africa, the Australian Security Exchange, and global companies listed on the Dow Jones Sustainability Index.
A water disclosure index and quality description with a three-point assessment scale for each materiality element were developed to improve the accuracy of coding. Manual content analysis was implemented as the research design and qualitative and quantitative data was collected from the integrated, sustainability or environmental reports. The findings revealed that integrated reporting preparers outperformed non-integrated reporting users. The evidence indicates that integrated reporting is superior when disclosing on water in the food, beverage and tobacco industry, contributing to the stakeholder theory.