Extent of sustainability disclosure by Australian public universities: Inclusive analysis of key reporting media

This paper measures and inclusively analyses the extent of Australian public universities' sustainability disclosures on three key reporting media, that is annual reports, stand-alone sustainability reports, and websites. The study also compares the extent of the disclosures across university g...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Australian journal of public administration 2021-12, Vol.80 (4), p.830-848
Main Authors: Trireksani, Terri, Zeng, Yun‐Ting, Djajadikerta, Hadrian Geri
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Annual reports
Australia
Colleges & universities
Content analysis
Graphical Assessment of Sustainability in Universities (GASU)
Mass media
Public universities and colleges
Sustainability
sustainability disclosure
Sustainability reporting
sustainability reports
Sustainable development
universities
Websites
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Summary:This paper measures and inclusively analyses the extent of Australian public universities' sustainability disclosures on three key reporting media, that is annual reports, stand-alone sustainability reports, and websites. The study also compares the extent of the disclosures across university groupings. Content analysis was used to analyse the data by utilising the updated Graphical Assessment of Sustainability in Universities (GASU) indicators together with a weighted scoring scheme. Mann-Whitney and Kruskal-Wallis tests were applied in the comparison tests. The results of this study indicate that the extent of sustainability disclosures made by Australian public universities is overall fairly low, and the evaluation and comparison of the extent of sustainability disclosures among different university groupings overall show no significant difference. Overall, the findings suggest that there is a need to increase both the level of awareness and recognition of benefits resulted from performing sustainable development activities and the way these performances are better communicated to stakeholders.
ISSN:0313-6647
1467-8500
DOI:10.1111/1467-8500.12469