| الملخص: | It has been widely proven that businesses should have sustainable operations to ensure
resources such as clean air, clean water, and community welfare are preserved for
future generations. Despite the growing demand for sustainability disclosure within
the accounting domain, the collective progress on reducing the negative impacts of
business activity, especially construction activity, is growing too slow. The
construction industry is known to have a significant impact on the environment,
economy, and society. Nevertheless, companies in this industry are still left behind in
making progress for good disclosure. Therefore, there is always an opportunity for
research to look for ways to enhance sustainability disclosure in the construction
industry. One way of looking into this matter is from the perspective of the
stakeholders’ role in reporting. The stakeholder theory proposes that firms manage
broad and conflicting stakeholders' interests to increase firm performance. The
primary stakeholders, such as shareholders, employees, customers, and business
partners, have profit motives for investing in the companies. This conviction does not
apply to secondary stakeholders, such as the local community, media, and NGOs. The
managers do not have direct obligation to create value for them. Hence, it is
interesting to search for stakeholder attributes that are possibly associated with
sustainability disclosure. Therefore, this study was conducted to examine the
stakeholder attributes that would influence or motivate companies to do sustainability
disclosure. The attributes involved in this study were stakeholder power, legitimacy,
and urgency. The variance in the attributes can influence the companies in carrying
out sustainability disclosure. The sustainability disclosure in the annual reports of 140
construction and property companies in Malaysia was repeatedly observed for three
years (2015-2017) and statistically analysed using fixed-effects model. The empirical
results suggest a positive relationship between sustainability disclosure and
stakeholders’ legitimacy and urgency. However, these relationships are marginal for
the secondary stakeholders when stakeholders' legitimacy and power are interacted.
Furthermore, this study found limited evidence to support sustainability disclosure as
a function of stakeholder power. Since the power attribute is usually held by internal
stakeholders, this finding is aligned with the reporting practice where sustainability
disclosure is used for engagement purposes with external stakeholders. Overall, this
study supports the claim that stakeholder attributes affect sustainability disclosure.
Notably, it supports the idea of focusing on primary stakeholders in the sustainability
disclosure choice because it is practical for businesses and avoids neglecting the need
of important stakeholder groups. The stakeholder groups' needs are deemed to be
fulfilled if a company can correctly identify the right group of stakeholders and its
sustainability concerns relevant to the industry.
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