Does ownership type affect sustainability reporting disclosure? Evidence from an emerging market

The aim of this study is to examine on the ways in which a company's sustainability reporting (SR) differs depending on the types of ownership it has, notably director ownership (DO), institutional ownership (IO), and foreign ownership (FO). This paper uses a sample of 145 firm-year observations from 29 listed banks in the Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE) of Bangladesh from 2016 to 2020 and regression analysis to test the relationship between different ownership structures and SR. The study also employed the generalized method of moments (GMM) to deal with the endogeneity issue. The findings show that investors have varying perspectives on SR disclosure activity. The findings show that two stockholding patterns, DO and FO, significantly impact SR disclosure in Bangladesh but that there is no significant association between IO and SR disclosure. In constructing SR, this paper depends on only the quantity of disclosure, not the quality, and is solely based on the published annual report. The study findings also provide a comprehensive overview of the SR practice of Bangladeshi banks, which may be helpful to regulators, policymakers, management, creditors, and other stakeholders in making investment and economic decisions. To encourage SR commitment, the government may need to keep an eye on the ownership structure and implement policies that encourage foreign investment. To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first study to look at how ownership structure influence SR practices in the banking industry of Bangladesh over five years.