The Clarity of the Information Regarding the Bioeconomy: An Analysis of the Reports Published by the Organizations
The Clarity of the Information Regarding the Bioeconomy: An Analysis of the Reports Published by the Organizations

Summary/Abstract: Bioeconomy is a material potential source of sustainable growth that calls for newapproaches in research and innovation to bring about concrete improvements in Europe’ssocial, economic and environmental wellfare. The purpose of our research is to evaluate theclarity of reports published by organizations. The assessment of the clarity of the publishedreports is done for both financial and non-financial information (containing elementsrelated to bioeconomy). The steps of this research are: (i) the investigation of the clarity ofthe information included in the sustainability reports, and (ii) explanation of the atypicalevolution of the clarity score, using the characteristics of the cultural dimensions of thehome country. We analysed 77 reports published on the websites of 17 organizations inthree environmentally-sensitive activity domains in 11 countries. Using content analysis,we determine an annual score of information clarity for each organization. The results ofthe research show that after switching to integrated reporting in 2013 the score ofinformation clarity was improved for 65% of the companies. Eleven organizations have adegree of information clarity for the reports published in 2013 and 2016 better than forthose published in 2010. We find five atypical cases for which the score of informationclarity remains the same for all the three periods under investigation. These cases have beenanalyzed from the point of view of the cultural characteristics existing in the organization’shome country. Through our research we provide feedback to organizations on how they canimprove the clarity of their published reports.

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