Heading towards sustainability reporting: A pilot study into the progress of embracing the global reporting initiative in the United Kingdom

Abstract

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.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): a rising tide lifts all boats? Global reporting implications in a post SDGs world

“…Corporate social responsibility reporting took a broader dimension in the 1990s after the introduction of the triple bottom line (3BL) framework by Elkington (1998). The framework highlights the importance of balancing the economic, environmental and social performance of businesses instead of exclusively addressing the financial bottom line (Buallay, 2019) that has been dominating corporate reporting (Turner et al , 2006; Milne and Gray, 2013).…”

Determinants of CSR disclosure in Mexico

“…This choice is due to the acknowledgement that an exclusive focus on annual reports may result in an incomplete representation of the CSR reporting practices. Several scholars note that over time, CSR reporting has evolved to stand-alone reports that include social, environmental, and financial information (Cho et al, 2015;Milne and Gray, 2007) and to other related disclosures that are disseminated through corporate websites (Adams and Frost, 2004;Guthrie et al, 2008;Patten and Crampton, 2003;Turner et al, 2006;Unerman and Bennett, 2004). All reports were in Spanish.…”

Content analysis in social and environmental reporting research: trends and challenges

“…Indeed longitudinal designs are more frequent in meaning-oriented studies (62 per cent). Content analysis has also contributed towards identifying specific disclosure strategies used by organisations operating mostly in developed (Cormier and Gordon, 2001) but also within developing countries (Islam and Deegan, 2010) and has further examined compliance to social and environmental standards, such as Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) (Turner et al, 2006).…”