Abstract
This study assesses the impacts of combined assurance (CA) quality on external reporting qualities (i.e., integrated, sustainability and financial reports). Data from listed firms on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) in South Africa are used in this study. JSE is the largest stock exchange in Africa and, currently, the only capital market that mandates integrated reporting (IR) practice. This study uses content analysis to produce IR and CA quality data from IR reports and collects financial and sustainability quality data from the Bloomberg database. Ordinary least square (OLS) regression is used to test the models, together with a set of robustness tests. The findings show strong associations between CA quality and both IR and sustainability reporting qualities, indicating that CA effectively enhances the credibility of sustainability-exhaustive reporting practices. However, for financial reporting quality, CA impacts differently the two financial measures used in this study (i.e., real and accrual earnings management).
