Sustainability has gained considerable interest from businesses, academics and in the press in the last two decades. However, the existing sustainability literature says little about what banks gain from moving towards sustainable development. Studies on the relationship between sustainability practices and performance in banks are extremely scarce and have produced inconclusive results. This thesis has two major purposes: to investigate the current sustainability practices in the banking sector and to examine the relationship between sustainability and performance in the banking sector. To achieve this, a sustainability model has been developed for the banking sector taking stakeholders’ effects into consideration. Content analysis was employed to collect the necessary data on stakeholder engagement, communication efforts to stakeholders, strategy and sustainability information. Performance data were obtained from the Bankscope database and 483 bank reports for EU & USA banks over the period 2006-2012 were examined. The data were first analysed using descriptive statistics. The main analysis involved bivariate tests and structural equation modelling path analysis. The results indicate that European banks pay more attention and communicate significantly more with different stakeholder groups than American banks. Banks responded to different degrees to stakeholder issues in their sustainability reports. Moreover, the results show that EU banks carry out more sustainability practices than USA banks. The results also show positive relationships between stakeholders’ salience and all aspects of sustainability; stakeholders’ communications and the environmental aspects of sustainability; size and all sustainability aspects except product sociology. The effect of stakeholder salience on sustainability is more significant in European banks pursuing a sustainability strategy while the effects of communications on sustainability are more significant in American banks with a non-sustainability strategy. Size affects sustainability more in banks with a non-sustainability strategy, but no differences were found for the effect of size on sustainability between the two regions. Furthermore, the results show that the environmental aspects of sustainability are not related to the banks’ performance, but a positive association with the social aspects of sustainability was found. This study is the first to develop a sustainability model for the banking sector. Hence, it makes significant contributions to the sustainability literature. It helps improve our understanding of the different dimensions of sustainability, how they are affected by different stakeholders and strategic orientations, and how they affect the performance of banks. The results of this study can help EU and USA banks to direct their efforts to areas that improve their engagement with stakeholders and their own performance.

Thesis (MBA)--Stellenbosch University, 2012. / The financial crisis of the last decade has resulted in a change in the way organisations do their reporting. The trend has been away from annual financial reports towards integrated reporting. Integrated reporting includes not only financial information but also information showing the effect the organisation has on the environment and the society in which it operates. The research conducted in this study aimed to determine the level to which organisations in the insurance industry disclosed information relating to strategy in their annual reports and their sustainability report. Five companies in the insurance industry were studied using their publicly available, sustainable and annual or integrated annual reports for the 2010 period. In order to measure the levels of strategy disclosure, three baselines were created and used in surveying the insurance companies. Baseline 1 was based on the GRI G3 reporting guidelines, baseline 2 on the strategic architecture of Ungerer, Pretorius and Herholdt (2011) and baseline 3 was based on the business model elements of Osterwalder and Pigneur (2010). The conclusions reached in the study were that the overall level of strategy disclosure within the insurance industry is 69 percent. The level of strategy disclosure for the individual baselines was 69 percent for baseline 1, 67 percent for baseline 2 and 70 percent for baseline 3.

As a result of new information technology and globalization, there has never before been a time when people have had better access to information, than nowadays. The potential overload of information builds the basis for the research questions of this cumulative dissertation, which relates to the extensively discussed 'disclosure overload problem'. Special focus is put on decision-useful information in voluntary reporting of capital market-oriented companies. In this context the first manuscript investigates the quality of information in voluntary strategy reporting and formulates qualitative principles. Based thereon, the second manuscript examines determinants influencing the quality of strategy reporting. The third manuscript is focusing on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) reporting and investigates the relation of transparency in CSR reports and external assurance. The prior discussed topics as well as financial reporting and new reporting concepts, like integrated reporting, are put into context in the fourth manuscript. In this educational case study special emphasis is placed on the determination of material information, which is of high importance for future decision leaders.