Does Governance Quality Explain the Sustainability Reporting Tendency of the Public Sector? Worldwide Evidence

The objective of this study is to investigate whether governance quality is associated with the sustainability reporting tendency of public sector organizations. For this purpose, we have collected the sustainability reporting numbers of the public sectors of all countries, Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGIs) data, and other controlling variables of 242 countries for 2015 and 2016 from several sources. The results consistently and firmly support that the overall governance quality, as measured by the average of six WGIs, is significantly associated with the sustainability reporting practices of public sector organizations. Moreover, except for political stability, the remaining five WGIs have significant explanatory power on sustainability reporting levels of the public sector globally. Thus, the study largely proves the existence of a robust link between the governance performance of the public sector and its sustainability disclosure. We conclude the paper by drawing country-level implications and highlighting future research avenues.