Exploring employee-related and human rights reporting in the year leading up to the Transparency Act : A content analysis of integrated and stand-alone reports from 2021 for a selection of firms on the OBX25.

Abstract

Increasing expectations from stakeholders as well as from legislators regarding companies’ responsibilities towards employees and human rights motivated us to study 14 Norwegian firms’ reporting on information connected to these areas. Using a manual content analysis framework, we examined the extent and substantiveness of disclosure related to employees and human rights in integrated reports and stand-alone ESG reports. We found that Health and safety, as well as Diversity and equal opportunity, were the most disclosed employeerelated content items, and that employee-related reporting was generally mostly substantive. The firms in our sample reported less on human rights, specific human rights items were rarely mentioned, and the information provided was mostly symbolic.