Readability of ESG Reports and Firm Performance: A Canadian Perspective
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract: Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) reports are an essential communication outlet for firms, and as such, their readability is critical. Therefore, enhancing the readability of these reports is paramount to corporate communication effectiveness. This research explores the relationship among the readability of Canadian Companies’ ESG reports, their performance and movement in share price. Applying a quantitative method, we found that firms’ profitability impacted the readability of ESG reports; however, the readability of ESG reports did not significantly impact firms’ share prices. This research adds to impression management, particularly obfuscating theory, by demonstrating managerial agency about ESG reports’ readability and firms’ financial performance. Keywords: ESG Report Readability, FOG, Obfuscation Theory, Firm Performance, Firm Value JEL Classification Number: O10, O44
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.019 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.006 | 0.010 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.004 | 0.003 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.005 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".