Corporate Supply Chain Disclosures and Factors Determining the Disclosure Approaches: A Palm Oil Case Study

Abstract

Palm oil is one of four big commodities contributing to rapid deforestation. Companies face stakeholder pressure to produce and source palm oil sustainably and to disclose their commitments and actions. This study analyses companies' disclosures to understand the state of disclosure practice, identify typical disclosure profiles, examine the complementarity between commitments and sustainable sourcing practices, understand the factors influencing companies' disclosure profiles, and identify ways to encourage companies to act sustainability and disclose their supply chain information. Data were collected from publicly available documents such as websites, annual reports, and sustainability reports. Methods used include content analysis, means clustering and multinomial logit regression. The resulting disclosure profiles can be used as a guide for companies towards to understand the state of disclosures and ideally, select more aggressive supply chain sustainability approaches. The estimated model quantified the importance of media influence and regulations in encouraging greater corporate supply chain sustainability and disclosures.