Critical Evaluation of Environmental, Social and Governance Disclosures of Malaysian Property and Construction Companies

There is an increasing demand from stakeholders for higher transparency on environmental, social and governance (ESG) disclosures. Yet not much is known about the state of sustainability reporting in Malaysia especially in the property and construction industry. This paper aims to fill this gap accordingly. Content analysis of corporate websites, sustainability and annual reports was adopted as the main methodology in this study. Findings show that corporate governance indicators are most reported by Malaysian construction companies compared to other environmental or social indicators. It was also found that details on actual health and safety performance of these companies and the initiatives implemented were largely absent from their reporting. Given the increasing number of rating tools in the capital markets which serve to rank and file companies based on their sustainability disclosures and performance such as the Dow Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI) and FTSE4Good Index, it is questionable as to how reliable this can be done for the Malaysian property and construction market. The paper will be useful to construction management practitioners and ESG analysts with a focus on Asian markets.