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Reports an investigation into how 200 small and medium‐sized Swedish manufacturing companies look upon and treat automation technology. Shows that an increasing use of automation technology seems to create a successful company, but the human aspects and questions like “what will happen when the project is finished?” are seldom considered. Instead technical matters are in focus. Shows a lack of strategy formulation and little use of methods to design, introduce and evaluate automation projects.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate to what extent public sector entities in Austria, Germany and Switzerland apply sustainability reporting (SR) guidelines in line with the global reporting initiative (GRI) to respond to societal pressure. It further assesses the kind of data reported in order to illuminate whether well-balanced share of economic, environmental and social information are provided.

This study provides an empirical analysis of SR based on a documentary analysis of external reports by public sector organisations (PSO) included in the GRI’s database for the years 2012-2014.

PSO applying the GRI guidelines comply to a relatively great extent but show considerable variations and a clear imbalance of information reported concerning the three pillars of sustainable development.

The paper offers insight into GRI reporting practices by PSO in Austria, Germany and Switzerland. Additionally, a country and sector comparison was conducted. As previous studies mostly focus on SR in private corporations, the results contribute to advancing research on SR in the public sector where PSO increasingly have to demonstrate their (sustainable) contributions to the public benefit.