A Closer Look at the ‘Global Reporting Initiative’ Sustainability Reporting as a Tool to Implement Environmental and Social Policies: A Worldwide Sector Analysis (original) (raw)

The Global Reporting Initiative’s (GRI) past, present and future: critical reflections and a research agenda on sustainability reporting (standard-setting)

Pacific Accounting Review

Purpose This paper aims to reflect on the future of sustainability reporting standards by examining the current practical initiatives and the Global Reporting Initiative’s (GRI) position in the arena of non-financial and sustainability reporting and identifies avenues for future research. Design/methodology/approach A critical reflection and analysis of research on the GRI’s achievements and the influence of the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) Foundation’s initiative to develop global sustainability reporting standards. Findings The GRI has a dominant position in sustainability reporting standard-setting related to the provision of information about the influence of reporting organisations on society and the natural environment. The IFRS Foundation’s initiative to enter the sustainability reporting standard-setting arena, although from the perspective of providing information to investors regarding the influence of society and the environment on the reporting orga...

The likely adoption of the IFRS Foundation's proposed sustainability reporting standards

The Business and Management Review

There has been a rising demand for the global convergence of sustainability reporting standards (SRS) to provide consistency and comparability. The International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) Foundation has stepped forward, formed the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) and proposes to develop a global set of SRS. These standards will focus on the financial impacts of sustainability issues and are targeted towards the investor. However, this approach does not align with the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), the most commonly used sustainability reporting framework globally, which adopts a multistakeholder focus. This study aims to analyse the SRS currently being used by the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) Top 100 companies, the respective focus of these standards, and suggest whether these companies are likely to adopt the ISSB standards over the frameworks currently being used. A content analysis approach is adopted. The reports and websites of these compa...

Sustainability information – analysis of current trends in sustainability monitoring & reporting

Entrepreneurship and Sustainability Issues, 2023

Government legislation, investor and stakeholder expectations, as well as international voluntary initiatives have all contributed to the rising demand for high-quality information and reporting on sustainability issues. The scientific community exploring sustainability issues is expanding quickly, and the need for sustainability data has grown significantly in recent years. Sustainability reporting is a fast developing topic with many different monitoring and reporting frameworks, some criteria that overlap, and problems with worldwide consistency. This frequently causes uncertainty on how data and information should be used to produce useful results and science-based resources. The paper ascertains current trends in monitoring and reporting sustainability-related information, including a particular analysis for each relevant level (i.e. country and corporate). The study commences with an updated review of sustainability reporting literature followed by an emphasis on the well-known instruments (i.e. SDGs index and the International Spillover index) used to monitor and report the nations progress toward SDGs. Also, the connections among different international approaches/initiatives for increasing the accountability of companies for sustainability actions were analysed and the improvements were emphasized. Although the worldwide reporting seems to be led by the adoption of the GRI and SASB standards, the range of metrics and disclosure patterns is wide and displays a high variation across industries, sectors, sizes, complexity and location. Through a structured analysis, the paper argued international initiatives (i.e. European Sustainability Reporting Standards and IFRS Sustainability Disclosure Standards) are of valuable importance for counteracting the fragmentation of available sustainability information and assuring the alignment and interoperability between different sustainability information.

The Development of Worldwide Sustainability Reporting Assurance

Australian Accounting Review, 2013

This research investigates the development of assured sustainability reports (SRs) during this century's first decade. More specifically, it presents basic descriptive data on a sample of 148 SRs published in 2006 and 2007 and contrasts this sample with the sample discussed in Mock et al. 2007. The prior study examined a sample of 130 assured SRs issued between 2002 and 2004. Both samples provide information about the nature of SRs, allowing us to investigate important questions such as which countries and industries are more likely to have an assurance statement, what levels of assurance are provided, and what factors affect the level of assurance provided. In addition to providing descriptive data relative to the above questions, we run logistic regressions where the dependent variable is whether a Big 4 firm provided the assurance for both periods being considered. Some important differences are observed related to whether the assurance provided applies to both the quantitative and qualitative assertions made in the report (significantly negatively associated with the Big 4 in the 2002-2004 period, but not significant in 2006-2007), whether the report uses symbols to identify assured statements (significantly positively associated with the Big 4 in

Sustainability reporting in the energy sector

E3S Web of Conferences, 2016

Development of the concepts of sustainable development and corporate social responsibility has a great impact on reporting in companies. The increase of their importance has resulted in a need to create a reporting system that would provide information on not only the methods but also the results of implementation of those concepts in companies. Globally, there are many organizations that promote and support companies in the area of integrated reporting. The most popular standard for reporting non-financial data that is used by a number of companies worldwide is the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) Guidelines. The main objective of the GRI is to support the development of sustainable economy in which companies take responsibility for the economic, social, and environmental consequences of their operations, manage that responsibility, and report all their actions. An example of a sector where the concept of sustainable development and its transparent reporting has an impact on the formation of values is the energy sector, which creates value for stakeholders and, together with the financial sector, has the greatest impact on national economies.

A decade of sustainability reporting: developments and significance

International Journal of Environment and Sustainable …, 2004

Since the publication of the first separate environmental reports in 1989, the number of companies that has started to publish information on its environmental, social or sustainability policies and/or impacts has increased substantially. This article gives an overview of worldwide trends in the frequencies of reporting in the past decade, based on surveys carried out since the early 1990s. Although clear differences between countries and sectors can be noted, reporting continues to rise, and there is a clear tendency towards the inclusion of societal, and sometimes also financial, issues. The article also analyses the latest developments with regard to the contents of these sustainability reports, focusing on economic aspects and business drivers, stakeholder dialogue and feedback, and benchmarking of performance. The final section discusses the significance of reporting, introducing the concept of 'implementation likelihood', and the components of an analytical scheme to assess this for sustainability reports.

Evaluating the Intra-Industry Comparability of Sustainability Reports: The Case of the Oil and Gas Industry

Sustainability, 2019

Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) data are in high demand in financial markets. However, the ESG data provided by companies do not allow for use in the investment decision-making process. The main limiting point for this is a lack of comparability across companies. This paper analyzes the problem of comparability with the aim to evaluate the intra-industry comparability of sustainability reports, framing the analysis on Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) Standards and discussing the results with the support of legitimacy and stakeholder theories. Drawing upon stakeholder and legitimacy theories, as well as financial and sustainability accounting concepts, we propose a theoretical framework of comparability and a methodology to evaluate the level of comparability on a sector-specific basis. The methodological approach adopted in this study is broadly qualitative, with the use of a multiple-stages model. Based on the example of one industry, we discovered that, despite compar...

Social contagion and the institutionalisation of GRI-based sustainability reporting practices

Meditari Accountancy Research, 2021

Purpose This study aims to investigate the adoption and diffusion of Global Reporting Initiative (GRI)-based sustainability reporting practices within the global financial services sector. Design/methodology/approach The approach draws on the sociological construct of social contagion theory (SCT) to explain the drivers of diffusion of GRI-based sustainability reporting. Based on a longitudinal study of GRI adoption over a period from 2000 to 2016, thematic content analysis of sustainability reports and media articles was used to refine information gathered that related to nature and spread of GRI-based sustainability practices within the global financial services sector. Findings This study finds that the early adopters of GRI-based sustainability reporting and the accompanying media attention influenced the institutional diffusion of GRI-based reporting in the financial services sector. This growth was isomorphic as companies copied best practice models to reduce uncertainty and m...

Scoring Sustainability Reports using GRI indicators: A Study based on ISE and FTSE4Good Price Indexes

The objective of this research is to verify the level of adherence to the GRI indicators that Brazilian companies listed in ISE and those listed in FTSE4Good are using in their 2011 sustainability reports and what are the differences between these two groups. The research design combines both quantitative and qualitative methods. The target population consists of 70 companies, 35 from ISE and 35 from FTSE4Good. Content analysis was used to analyze the indicators disclosed in the reports and the information presented was classified in three categories of scoring according to its level of disclosure. On average, ISE companies scored 0,5867 and FTSE4Good scored 0,4451. The best company scored 0,924 and the worst of 70 companies scored 0,105. Overall, our statistical results show that ISE companies are more adherent to the GRI indicators than FTSE4Good companies, mainly in the economic and social dimensions. Yet, the companies spay similar attention in all 3 dimensions, regardless of economic sector and index. We can say that good sustainability reports showing deeper sustainability concerns and business practices related are acting accordingly to the Stakeholder and Legitimacy theories, regardless of their level of adherence to GRI