Corporate sustainability reporting of major commercial banks in line with GRI: Bangladesh evidence

TLDR

Based on GRI G3 guidelines, the paper investigates banks’ sustainability reporting across five broad areas: environment, labour practices and decent works, product responsibility, human rights, and society. The study aims to examine how major Bangladeshi commercial banks report sustainability, comparing their disclosures to GRI framework indicators and assessing their coverage of 16 GRI financial service sector performance metrics. The authors analyzed and coded the 2008/2009 annual reports of 12 Dhaka Stock Exchange‑listed commercial banks using a content‑based technique. The study found that Bangladeshi banks report society‑related information most extensively, followed by decent works/labour and environmental disclosures, while product responsibility and human rights disclosures are scarce, and only seven of the 16 GRI FSS indicators are consistently reported across all banks.

Abstract

Purpose This paper aims to examine the tendencies of sustainability reporting by major commercial banks in Bangladesh in comparison with global sustainability reporting indicators outlined in the GRI framework together with banks' predilection toward reporting 16 GRI financial service sector (FSS) specific performance indicators. Design/methodology/approach Based on the GRI G3 guidelines, the paper investigated banks' reporting in five broad areas of sustainability, such as environment, labour practices and decent works, product responsibility, human rights and society. The 2008/2009 annual reports of 12 major commercial banks listed on Dhaka stock exchange were analysed and coded using a content‐based technique. Findings The results show that information on society is addressed most extensively with regard to extent of reporting. This is followed by the disclosures prepared on decent works and labour practices and environmental issues. Furthermore, the disclosures of product responsibility information and the information for human rights are rather scarce in banks' reporting; on the subject of FSS‐specific disclosures, only seven items out of 16 are disclosed by all sample banks. Research limitations/implications The findings of the study indicate that Bangladeshi commercial banks' social disclosures could develop in this style to become more holistic and over time (in association with the country's central bank involvement) to resemble a type of structured reporting to the point where they are properly labelled per se. Originality/value The study contributes to the social disclosure literature, in particular in a developing countries banking sector context, seeing as it disseminates evidence of the standing on social disclosures practices at the level of GRI with developing countries' banks data.