Legitimacy Reverbs of Mandatory Regulations on Sustainability Disclosure at a Worldwide Level.

The purpose of this study is to significantly contribute to the arising debate about mandatory nonfinancial disclosure promoted at a Worldwide level, with specific focus on sustainability accounting and reporting. Indeed, in the last twenty years, accounting scholars and Social and Environmental researchers have deeply discussed the role of voluntary social and environmental disclosure and CSR, however, few of them have focused on the fact that, recently, several regulatory bodies have started requiring mandatory corporate disclosure in such areas. For instance, the European Parliament has issued the 2014/95/EU Directive on non-financial disclosure which mandates larger companies to adopt it by the end of 2016; in the US, from July 2011 the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) is providing mandatory industry guidelines for the disclosure of sustainability issues in mandatory SEC companies’ filings; in South Africa, the Johannesburg Stock Exchange required the adoption of integrated reporting from 2011; and several other Countries and Region have followed this trend. Even a Machiavellian approach in boosting the disclosure of non-financial information should be welcome, this globally smoothing change towards mandatory vs. voluntary approach arises new scenarios. In order to reduce the risk of “simulacrum” effect of the mandatory disclosure, emerging studies and predictive models are needed. The simulacrum effects means the risk that companies not well-aware of sustainability disclosures will produce reports that will be slight, unreal, or “vague semblance of something”. Therefore is timely and important to provide a comprehensive analysis of the state of the art and the consequences of the adoption of mandatory sustainability reporting at a WorldWide level.