Sustainability Disclosure among Malaysian Shari’ah-Compliant listed Companies: Web Reporting

Abstract

This paper advances previous research of sustainability disclosure by focusing on informationdisclosed in the companies’ web site rather than through annual reports. Despite looking at thelisted companies in general, this study attempts to consider the practice of disclosing sustainabilityinformation in the Malaysian Shari’ah-Compliant listed companies, which represented87% of the total listed securities or 64.3% of the market capitalization on Bursa Malaysia website. This study used Islamicity Disclosure Index consists of Shari’ah Compliance Indicator,Corporate Governance Index and Social/Environmental Index, and the data is analysed using acontent analysis. The results of the study suggest that the sustainability disclosure by MalaysianShari’ah-compliant listed companies fall significantly on corporate governance index themes,followed by social/environmental index themes. However, Malaysian Shari’ah-compliant listedcompanies did not clearly disclose the items under Shari’ah compliance index. Contrary to ourexpectation, most of the companies disclose the items measured in the annual reports linked tothe companies’ web site and are thus not fully in the web site.