Citation: Qaderi, S.A.; Ghaleb, B.A.A.; Hashed, A.A.; Chandren, S.; Abdullah, Z. Board Characteristics and Integrated Reporting Strategy: Does Sustainability Committee Matter?. Sustainability 2022, 14, 6092. https://doi.org/10.3390/su14106092 Academic Editor: Andrea Pérez Received: 20 April 2022 Accepted: 15 May 2022 Published: 17 May 2022 Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affil- iations. Copyright: © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). sustainability Article Board Characteristics and Integrated Reporting Strategy: Does Sustainability Committee Matter? Sumaia Ayesh Qaderi 1,2, * , Belal Ali Abdulraheem Ghaleb 3 , Abdulwahid Ahmed Hashed 4, * , Sitraselvi Chandren 2 and Zaimah Abdullah 2 1 Department of Accounting, College of Commerce and Economics, Hodeidah University, Hodeidah 9673, Yemen 2 Tunku Puteri Intan Safinaz School of Accountancy, College of Business, Universiti Utara Malaysia, Sintok 06010, Malaysia; sitraselvi@uum.edu.my (S.C.); zaimah2258@uum.edu.my (Z.A.) 3 Institute for Strategic and Sustainable Accounting Development (ISSAD), Tunku Puteri Intan Safinaz School of Accountancy, College of Business, Universiti Utara Malaysia, Sintok 06010, Malaysia; b.ali.abdlraheem@uum.edu.my 4 Department of Accounting, College of Business Administration, Prince Sattam Bin Abdulaziz University, Al-Kharj 16273, Saudi Arabia * Correspondence: sumaia.qaderi.2020@gmail.com (S.A.Q.); aa.abdullah@psau.edu.sa (A.A.H.) Abstract: Integrated reporting (IR) is the latest topic in corporate reporting that has raised interest in the disclosure literature. Although the board’s role in IR practice has received significant attention in developed countries, this effect is still unexamined in an emerging market like Malaysia. Thus, this study sought to fill this gap in the IR literature by investigating the impact of the board of directors’ characteristics on the quantity and quality of IR disclosure. The study also examined whether the existence of a sustainability committee affects the board-IR relationship. The study used all listed companies in Bursa Malaysia that applied IR strategy from 2017 to 2020 to test the hypotheses. It employed a content analysis technique to measure the quantity and quality of IR using an index with 100 items based on the International Integrated Reporting Council guidelines. Multivariate ordinary least squares (OLS) regression was applied to examine these relationships. The analysis showed that board size, independence, gender diversity, and non-executive remuneration were positively and significantly related to greater IR disclosure, suggesting that the board of directors has a monitoring role in reducing agency problems and protecting stakeholders’ interests. However, multiple directorships did not affect IR disclosure. The analysis also showed that the presence of a sustainability committee positively affected IR disclosure, and had a moderating effect on the board-IR disclosure relationship. Our result was robust to alternative measures of the corporate board and an alternative regression model. This study is among the first to provide empirical evidence of the board and sustainability committee’s significant role in enhancing IR strategy. The findings may benefit regulatory bodies, policymakers, company managers, investors, and researchers in better understanding how directors’ characteristics influence companies’ IR practices. Keywords: integrated reporting; board of directors; sustainability committee; agency theory; resource dependency theory; Malaysia 1. Introduction In recent years, the topic of integrated reporting (IR) and its disclosure has received substantial attention from regulators, professionals, and academics [1]. IR is a new trend in corporate reporting, representing a paradigm shift from traditional reporting of financial and non-financial information separately to combining the two in a single report [2,3]. It represents the company’s capacity to create value over time [4], enabling it to improve decisions relating to internal resource allocation and improve risk management [5]. IR also allows companies to meet other stakeholders’ information requirements, contributing Sustainability 2022, 14, 6092. https://doi.org/10.3390/su14106092 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability