Search results

The study examines sustainability reporting in the government and not-for-profit organizations (GNFPs). Using a descriptive approach, data from the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) are utilized to identify GNFP’s sustainability reporting trends and incentives over the period from 2001 to 2016. The study shows improvement in the GNFPs’ sustainability reporting over the analysis period, especially by larger organizations. In specific, results show that the number of GNFPs that reported has increased over the analysis period, and the number of social, economic, and environmental issues that are reported on has also increased although fragmentally across different GNFPs. In addition, a few GNFPs integrate their sustainability report with their financial report or obtain external assurance. The study shows that GNFPs’ sustainability reporting is motivated by meeting stakeholders’ needs and achieving business goals. Based on these findings, the study identifies future reporting opportunities for GNFPs to improve informativeness and reliability of sustainability reporting with the ultimate goals of improving transparency and accountability. The data used in this study capture only the GNFPs that reported or registered in the GRI database. Thus, future studies may use other data sets or conduct field and case analyses to obtain further insights into the process of adopting and reporting on sustainability and the roles that different stakeholders play in pursuing such efforts. In addition, the study identifies other future research opportunities. The study contributes to the extant literature on sustainability and social responsibility during periods of changing regulatory framework in less-researched organizations that contributes significantly to society.

While implementing green innovation-driven strategies when facing growing grim environmental problems and the realistic demands of achieving high-quality development is increasingly urgent, changing abruptly is inevitably detrimental to the smooth functioning of social and economic development. Restrained by resources, innovation-driven strategy is a huge strategy for an organization to shift from traditional technological innovation to green innovation. Supports and implementation in green technology investment would necessarily crowd out other business investment and lead to reduction of innovation outputs and mount of financial uncertainty. Under the guidance of harmonious balance, the equilibrium allocation between green research and non-green counterpart is badly needed to be addressed for decision-makers inside and outside the organizations. The differentiated inputs of them would lead to different effects on organizational performance in practice.

The authors first conducted a Hausman test on green research intensity (GRI) and innovation performance, economic performance, social performance, and environmental performance, respectively. Adopting the fixed effects model for estimation seems accurate, if there is no significant heteroscedasticity shown in the BP test. The authors then adopted the least square dummy variable method to handle individual heterogeneity (Xia et al., 2020). After controlling the industry effect and time effect simultaneously, the results were consistent with that of fixed effects model, thereby eliminating the impact of heteroscedasticity.

The authors construct a multi-dimensional performance system—innovation performance, economic performance, social performance, and environmental performance—to probe into the influence of GRI from the resource-based view and allocation theory. Different performance does not benefit equally from increasing the intensity of green research. Performance increase may squeeze out the quantity of total innovation but can compensate quality for knowledge spillovers of green technology. The organization's growth and long-term value may be beneficial from the increase, but not the short-term financial performance. While the relationship between GRI and social performance has the characteristic of reverse U-curve, there has to be some scale of green research to gain considerable and nonlinear environmental performance. Low level of green research may increase pollution until green research has cross over the inflection point. These relationships are intensely moderated by the environmental regulation.

Because of the focus of this study is on the organizational performance of green research, the analysis comes with some limitations that should be addressed in future research. Data were inter-professional, with large enterprises and small businesses innovating green technology at the same time. Though the hypotheses presented here were grounded in existing theoretical rationale, the generality of this study cannot be assumed. Multi-performance of green activities in small- and medium-sized businesses should be further explored. Additionally, concrete index of the corresponding evaluation system constructed here contribute more to practical activities of green innovation. Refinement of synergy performance index is the task for future work. Further, grounded in Chinese context, the authors' results could be compared with other scenario with institutional heterogeneity to provide detailed evidences for institutional theory. Future studies could also move forward to longitudinal case study to delicately investigate the performance differentiation of green research when in different development stage.

First, what and how the authors do is novel as the authors use listed Chinese manufacturing companies to probe into the complex relationship between GRI and multiple performance rather than discussing the performance of green innovation input from a single perspective merely. Second, the authors systematically define the performance as economic performance, environmental performance, social performance and innovation performance in depth, which consider adequately the tangible and intangible value as well as internal and external benefits of green research. And finally, in the context of environmental regulation, the study discusses the differentiation of the increase of green research intensity from the perspective of resource constraints, providing reference for optimizing the resource allocation in green and non-green research and solving the decoupling between earnest social appeal and sluggish or reluctant green behaviors.

Developing countries experience their own social, political and environmental issues, but surprisingly limited papers have examined sustainability reporting in these regions, notably in sub-Saharan Africa. To fill this gap and understand the state of sustainability reporting in sub-Saharan Africa, this paper aims to investigate the current state of reporting, identifies the major motivations and barriers for reporting and suggests an agenda of future issues that need to be considered by firms, policymakers and academics.

This paper includes analysis of reporting practices in 48 sub-Saharan African countries using the lens of New Institutional Economics. It comprises three phases of data collection and analysis: presentation of overall reporting data collected and provided by Global Reporting Initiative (GRI). analysis of stand-alone sustainability reports using qualitative data analysis and interviews with key report producers.

The analysis identifies key issues that companies in selected sub-Saharan African countries are grappling within their contexts. There are significant barriers to reporting but institutional mechanisms, such as voluntary reporting frameworks, provide an important bridge between embedding informal norms and changes to regulatory requirements. These are important for the development of better governance and accountability mechanisms.

Findings have important implications for policymakers and institutions such as GRI in terms of regulation, outreach and localised training. More broadly, global bodies such as GRI and IIRC in a developing country context may require more local knowledge and support. Limitations include limited data availability, particularly for interviews, which means that these results are preliminary and provide a basis for further work.

The findings of this paper contribute to the knowledge of sustainability reporting in this region, and provide some policy implications for firms, governments and regulators.

This paper is one of only a handful looking at the emerging phenomenon of sustainability reporting in sub-Saharan African countries.

In the past decade much has been written on the need to develop social, ethical and environmentally responsible performance reporting frameworks that engage with all organisational stakeholders. The theoretical development of these frameworks has spanned nearly a century culminating in the release in 2000 of voluntary guidelines developed by the Coalition for Environmentally Responsible Economies and the United Nations Environment Programme through the offices of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI). The release of the sustainability reporting guidelines perhaps could not have been more inopportune insofar as it coincided with a concerted effort on the part of the accounting regulators toward global harmonisation of financial reporting standards. This paper reports the findings of a survey of Company Secretaries and company provided information examining the extent to which these guidelines have been adopted by the leading public companies in the United Kingdom. The findings suggest limited acceptance and in the resource‐constrained environment of the twenty‐first century business implementation of mandatory requirements are given priority. Further research needs to be conducted to determine whether the GRI has a role to play in future stakeholder engagement.

This paper aims to evaluate the outcome effectiveness of the global reporting initiatives (GRI) transitions by understanding how companies have responded to the changes from G3.1 to G4 and finally to the GRI Standards.

A quality disclosure score is developed that incorporates assessments of both the quality of disclosures and the materiality of Australian companies. To analyse materiality, survey data were collected from 187 companies. Disclosure scores are based on a content analysis of the sustainability reports of 12 mining and metals companies and 12 financial services companies that used the GRI Standards from 2011 to 2019 (a total of 213 reports).

The study found that the GRI transitions have not led to companies improving the quality of their disclosures on areas considered important for them to achieve their social and environmental goals. Instead, the companies tended to use a greenwashing strategy, where the quality of disclosure of material issues declined or fluctuated over time.

From a practical perspective, the disclosure score developed in this paper enables managers of companies to recognize a threshold of completeness and to summarize the areas that are not materially relevant to their business.

The results are potentially helpful for investors, shareholders and other stakeholders, enabling them to better understand sustainability reports.

This study contributes to the body of research in sustainability reporting by providing evidence on the outcome effectiveness of the latest updates in the GRI framework.

The purpose of this paper is to enhance conceptual understanding of reporting boundaries in corporate annual reports by developing a conceptual framework of the rules and principles, referred to here as dimensions, underlying boundaries. A total of nine contemporary regulations/guidelines are compared in terms of the boundary dimensions identified to illustrate similarities and differences in boundary concepts.

To develop a conceptual framework of reporting boundary dimensions, academic and industry literature were analysed to identify boundary dimensions. Thereafter, nine contemporary regulations/guidelines were compared in terms of these dimensions. A qualitative approach was taken including document analysis and content analysis.

A total of 10 key boundary dimensions were identified through analysis of academic and industry literature. Each dimension represents a continuum along which regulations/guidelines can position themselves. Taken together, the 10 dimensions provide a comprehensive description of the chosen boundary concept.

The paper contributes to accounting theory by providing a holistic conceptual framework of dimensions relating to reporting boundaries, thus answering calls for more conceptual development of the boundary construct. The conceptual framework and comparison of contemporary regulations/guidelines adds to scarce literature considering financial and non-financial boundaries simultaneously, which is relevant for annual reports. From a practical perspective, the paper brings renewed visibility to boundaries with implications for preparers, users, standard setters and auditors of annual reports.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the status quo of Global Reporting Initiative (GRI)-based sustainable public value (SPV) reporting by electric utilities. Furthermore, the study attempts to find out whether a stock exchange listing and/or a public ownership are positively associated with electric utilities’ reporting regarding their contributions to a sustainable development (SD) or not.

An empirical analysis of sustainability reports published by electric utilities from 28 different countries all over the world is carried out. The investigation is based on a documentary analysis of 83 GRI G4 reports.

The findings show that electric utilities’ coverage of GRI indicators of the electric utilities sector disclosures varies between, as well as within, the different categories of the GRI guidelines and that the coverage of sector-specific indicators is often lacking behind the general coverage rates. Furthermore, the study reveals that a stock exchange listing is positively associated with electric utilities’ GRI-based SPV reporting. In contrast, public ownership does not show a significant association.

Electric utilities have a significant influence on SD. They operate in a regulated environment that is targeted at utilizing electric utilities for economic and environmental public policy objectives. Against that background, the study discusses which issues of SPV creation are reported by electric utilities that use the GRI guidelines and therefore brings together the public value (PV) and the sustainability community.

This paper aims to examine the existence of a transparency gap between voluntary external sustainability reporting and internal sustainability performance of an organisation arising from the operationalisation of transparency as an instrumental tool.

This study combined an analysis of a firm’s sustainability report (secondary data) with a qualitative case study data (primary data comprising interviews, meetings and internal documents) to understand how the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) sustainability reporting guidelines are applied in practice.

By comparing what is reported with a range of primary case study data, this study finds evidence of transparency gaps, particularly in terms of the quality of measurement of sustainability performance, the materiality of issues covered and the completeness of the report. This study posits that voluntary disclosures following the GRI guidelines (transparency technique) shape the external expression of acceptable corporate behaviour (transparency norm) that is nevertheless at odds with actual behaviour or performance.

The findings indicate the importance of mandatory sustainability reporting requirements that facilitate accountability to all key stakeholders and that are externally assured and enforced. Such requirements might take the form of standards that put boundaries on judgement and address material sustainable development impacts and that are accompanied by implementation guidance. Non-financial assurance practices must be developed to cover adherence to reporting principles and processes.

Transparency gaps that result from voluntary disclosure guidelines or standards being used to imply a transparency norm may undermine accountability for the impacts of the organisation and hinder alignment of business models and corporate strategies with sustainable development.

The paper contributes to a theoretical understanding of transparency as a form of self-regulation and has implications for the further development of sustainability reporting standards.

The aim of the study is to investigate the implementation of corporate sustainability (CS) in the German real estate sector.

The authors begin by outlining the framework set by the European Union and the German Federal Government for companies wanting to be classified as sustainable. After this, the relevance of sustainability for German real estate companies is discussed. Their empirical section contains an international comparison. Finally, they present an analysis checking the implementation of CS for the main 135 German real estate companies.

The present analysis shows that German real estate companies compare well with their international counterparts, in 2012 representing 15 per cent of all real estate firms reporting on the basis of the Global Reporting Initiative. However, of the 135 companies in Germany surveyed, only a small proportion classify themselves as CS and CSR (corporate social responsibility) enterprises. This number could be rapidly increased by better documentation of companies’ commitment to sustainability.

The study’s importance lies in the overview it provides of CS activities in the German real estate industry. In addition, it provides hints on how companies can improve their documentation to classify as CSR enterprises. Although the analysis concentrates on Germany, the results are also relevant for companies in other European countries.

This is the first study to offer a comprehensive overview of the CS activities of the German real estate industry.

By responding to scholarly calls, this study examines the environmental reports of LVMH and Kering. The study extends legitimacy theory to ascertain the credibility of the aforementioned luxury conglomerates' commitment to environmental sustainability.

A corpus-assisted discourse analysis centred upon the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) guidelines is used to examine the environmental disclosures of LVMH and Kering.

The findings show inconsistencies due to the lack of brand-level reporting and reporting quality falls short of comparable sustainability reporting within each conglomerate and with one another. Selective and unbalanced reporting along with symbolic management undermines the legitimacy of sustainability efforts by LVMH and Kering.

Despite the increased attention paid to sustainable luxury, few studies critically analyse how luxury brands formally report on sustainability.