TY  - RPRT
U1  - Arbeitspapier
A1  - Weuster, Carl W.
A1  - Ottenstein, Philipp
A1  - Jost, Sébastien
A1  - Winter, Sophie
T1  - External assurance and transparency in CSR reporting
BT  - European evidence
T2  - HHL Working paper
N2  - The spread of CSR reporting is accompanied by an increase of external assurance. Firms are employing assurance to signal the credibility of their CSR reports towards stakeholders and improve their reputation. Whether this practice is socially and economically beneficial remains up for debate. The research question of this paper concerns whether external assurance is associated with transparency in CSR reports. A panel data model is used to iestigate the empirical relationship of external assurance and three indicators of transparency: reporting scope as an indicator for completeness, readability as an indicator for clarity and optimism as an indicator for reporting balance, with the latter two proxies derived from text analysis.We find an ambiguous relationship between external assurance and reporting transparency: External assurance is positively related to reporting scope and negatively to optimism and readability. This study adds to the scarce literature on external assurance for CSR reporting. We contribute one of the first iestigations on how external assurance relates to linguistic aspects of CSR reporting transparency.
T3  - HHL-Arbeitspapier / HHL Working paper - 182 
KW  - CSR reporting
KW  - External assurances
KW  - Europe
KW  - Readability
KW  - Optimism
KW  - Computer-aided text analysis
Y1  - 2020
U6  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:101:1-2020122212522477402310
UN  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:101:1-2020122212522477402310
SN  - 1864-4562
SS  - 1864-4562
SP  - 42
S1  - 42
PB  - HHL Leipzig Graduate School of Management
CY  - Leipzig
ER  -