Does Sustainability Reporting Enhance Firms Profitability? A Study on Select Companies from India and South Korea

Abstract This paper examines the relationship between corporate sustainability reporting and firms profitability of Indian and South Korean companies. For calculating the disclosure score of sustainability performance, content analysis technique is employed based on the reporting format of Global Reporting Initiatives. The study sample consists of 28 listed non-financial firms from India and 26 listed non-financial firms from South Korea over a period of 6 years (2010–2015). Using the disclosure scores, regression analysis is used to examine the association between sustainability reporting/performance and firm performance. The regression results indicate that, for South Korean firms, the association is positive and significant. However, in Indian context, the impact of sustainability performance is negative. Further, the relative impact of sustainability reporting is found to be significantly more in South Korea as compared with India