Appealing to the Wrong Stakeholder? The Uneven Returns of Transparency in Voluntary Disclosure

Understanding how information transparency influences stakeholder perceptions is an increasingly important topic for firms that face pressure to self-report on their social responsibilities. As external constituencies other than shareholders become an increasingly important mechanism for social control, understanding the way that stakeholders attribute motivations behind information disclosure will help firms to not only improve financial performance, but also to mitigate reputational reputations. Drawing on attribution and stakeholder theories, we develop theoretical rationale for why different stakeholder groups make heterogeneous attributions over different characteristics of corporate transparency, affecting not only the firm’s market value, but also their reputation. Using datasets on corporate environmental disclosures (CDP) and performance (ASSET4), we find that not only do various stakeholders evaluate information disclosure differently, but stakeholder groups also respond differently to distinct characteristics of transparency. Furthermore, we show that these stakeholder responses are often nonlinear in nature, suggesting that transparency strategies in stakeholder management are more nuanced than previously thought.