SUMMARY This study provides evidence on whether sustainability-oriented corporate governance mechanisms impact the voluntary assurance of corporate sustainability reports. Specifically, we consider ...the presence and characteristics of environmental committees on the Board of Directors and a Chief Sustainability Officer (CSO) among the management team. When examining assurance services, we make a distinction between those services performed by professional accountants, consultants, and internal auditors. We find that the presence of a CSO is positively associated with corporate sustainability report assurance services, and this association increases when the CSO has sustainability expertise. Supporting the position that some firms establish sustainability-related governance merely to conform to socially desired behavior, we find that only those environmental committees containing directors with related expertise influence the likelihood of adopting sustainability assurance. Presently, environmental committees with greater expertise appear to prefer the higher-quality assurance services of professional accounting firms. Expert CSOs, on the other hand, prefer assurance services from their peers with sustainability expertise, as evidenced by their choice to employ consultants. When analyzing firms' environmental contextual characteristics, we find that firms employing a CSO and exhibiting poor environmental performance, relative to other firms in their industry, prefer to report sustainability results without assurance. While we do find that larger firms in the U.S. are significantly less likely to employ assurance, this result decreases over time. Further, we provide initial evidence that the value-relevance of sustainability assurance is increasing with time.
SUMMARY
This paper describes the current environment for assurance services for corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance. It then discusses opportunities for research, and highlights areas ...that are evolving as significant research opportunities and areas of significance that have been under-researched in the past. Finally, the paper reviews the five papers in the forum and highlights how multiple methodologies may be appropriate to examine different aspects of assuring CSR reporting from both internal and external assurance perspectives.
Over the period 1987–1991 an inter-disciplinary five-country group developed the EuroQol instrument, a five-dimensional three-level generic measure subsequently termed the ‘EQ-5D’. It was designed to ...measure and value health status. The salient features of its development and its consolidation and expansion are discussed. Initial expansion came, in particular, in the form of new language versions. Their development raised translation and semantic issues, experience with which helped feed into the design of two further instruments, the EQ-5D-5L and the youth version EQ-5D-Y. The expanded usage across clinical programmes, disease and condition areas, population surveys, patient-reported outcomes, and value sets is outlined. Valuation has been of continued relevance for the Group as this has allowed its instruments to be utilised as part of the economic appraisal of health programmes and their incorporation into health technology assessments. The future of the Group is considered in the context of: (1) its scientific strategy, (2) changes in the external environment affecting the demand for EQ-5D, and (3) a variety of issues it is facing in the context of the design of the instrument, its use in health technology assessment, and potential new uses for EQ-5D outside of clinical trials and technology appraisal.
This paper investigates the impact of corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure quantity, quality, and external validation concerning assurance on capital constraints. We examine if these ...disclosure characteristics matter to the investors in the financial market, then they should be positively evaluated by financial market participants. More specifically, we study the effects of disclosure quantity, quality, and assurance on the access to financial resources for reporting firms. Analysis of data of an international sample for the period of 2007–2016 significantly supports the value relevance idea of CSR disclosure quality. We document that availability of more information about the firm's CSR initiatives eases the financial access. Furthermore, the quality and external assurance of CSR disclosure further strengthen the relationship between disclosure and access to finance. Our paper not only provides support for buying assurance but also argue for better assurance quality.
SUMMARY
We examine whether CSR assurance increases investors' fundamental value estimates, whether this effect depends on the type of assurance (reasonable versus limited), and whether investors are ...prompted to explicitly assess the company's performance. We conduct a 3 × 2 between-subjects experiment, with CSR assurance being manipulated at three levels (no assurance, limited assurance, and reasonable assurance) and explicit assessment at two levels (no explicit assessment and explicit assessment). We find that when there is no prompt to explicitly assess performance, the investors who receive an assurance report at a reasonable level derive higher fundamental value estimates than the investors who receive CSR information that is not assured or assured at a limited level. Investors who receive either a reasonable or limited assurance level report perceive the information to be more reliable than the investors who receive CSR information that is not assured, regardless of the prompt for explicit assessment.
Seeking Value Sowers, Wesley E; Ranz, Jules M; Psychiatry, Group for the Advancement of
2020, 2020-11-13
eBook
This comprehensive volume examines the myriad factors that have led to the current state of health care in the United States -- starting with an analysis of the meaning and history of value ...measurement -- but it does not stop there. It offers a holistic vision for health care reform, one in which psychiatric professionals play a pivotal role.
PDF
