Fatores determinantes do nível de disclosure de informações representativas de sustentabilidade das cooperativas agropecuárias

Abstract

The main objective of this dissertation was to identify the determinants of the level os sustainability information disclosure by agricultural cooperatives. The central assumption or Legitimacy Theory suggests that the legitimization process of cooperative management is intrinsically linked to fulfilling the social contract, which is jeopardized by the existence of information asymmetry. One way to mitigate this problem and reaffirm the legitimacy of cooperative management is through the disclosure of representative sustainability information. In this context, to identify the determinantes of the disclosure level, a set of hypotheses was formulated and subjected to the statistical technique of multiple linear regression. The results of the statistical model indicate that factors such as indebtedness have a positive relationship with the level of sustainability disclosure, with a statistical significance of 1%. Similarly, the variables total cash flow and net equity showed a positive relationship with the disclosure level, with statistical significances of 5% and 10%, respectively. Moreover, the indicators representative of the sustainability practices of the cooperatives in the sample demonstrated different levels of disclosure. Managers, seeking to legitimize their actions, tend to disclosure more environmental information (68%), followed by economic (52%), social (46%), and cultural (37%), which reinforcer the social contract between the cooperatives and their stakeholders.