How Do Firms Comply with International Sustainability Standards? Processes and Consequences of Adopting the Global Reporting Initiative

Vigneau, Laurence; Humphreys, Michael; Moon, Jeremy

doi:10.1007/s10551-014-2278-5

Cited by 175 publications

(166 citation statements)

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“…The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) appears to be one of the most widely implemented set of guidelines for corporate sustainability reporting around the world [40][41][42], receiving support by the most renewed consulting firms worldwide. Recently, several studies focused on sustainability disclosure, applying specific guidelines such as those issued by the GRI [43][44][45][46][47]. However, some authors are arguing that these guidelines are insufficient conditions for letting organizations contribute to sustaining the Earth's ecosystem [43,48].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sustainability and Risk Disclosure: An Exploratory Study on Sustainability Reports

2017

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Recent policy changes in sustainability reporting, such as the ones related to the new European Directive on non-financial disclosure (2014/95/EU), the standards issued by the American Sustainability Accounting Standard Board (SASB), the G4 guidelines issued by the Global Sustainability Standard Board (GSSB), and the framework of the International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC) stress the importance of extending the disclosure of ethical, social, and environmental risks within financial and social-environmental reporting. Institutional pressure has notably increased among organizations, in setting up risk management tools to understand sustainability risks within managerial and reporting practices. Given such institutional pressure, the corporate reaction in providing additional sustainability risk disclosure calls for attention and scrutiny. Therefore, this study aims at addressing such issues from an exploratory perspective. We based our analysis on a sample of large Italian organizations that issued sustainability disclosure in accordance with the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), G4 guidelines, and we tested the relationship between their level of risk disclosure and other relevant variables. Consistently with the literature, we found that "experienced" sustainable reporters provide a significant volume of disclosure, and that disclosure quality on risk is positively influenced by their international presence and reporting experience. However, when accounting for specific risk-related areas of disclosure, only a few of them seem to adopt a managerial perspective linking strategy, risk metrics, and disclosure.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sustainability and Risk Disclosure: An Exploratory Study on Sustainability Reports

2017

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“…Cherapanukorn and Focken, 2014;Patten and Zhao, 2014) or specific issues and procedures of CSR reporting (e.g. Campopiano and De Massis, 2014;Fernandez-Feijoo et al, 2014;Vigneau et al, 2015). Yet, the literature on CSRccw is sparse.…”

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confidence: 99%

CSR communication on corporate websites compared across continents

Hetze

Winistörfer

2016

International Journal of Bank Marketing

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About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.comEmerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society. The company manages a portfolio of more than 290 journals and over 2,350 books and book series volumes, as well as providing an extensive range of online products and additional customer resources and services.Emerald is both COUNTER 4 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation. AbstractPurpose -The purpose of this paper is to evaluate how the 106 largest banks in the world use their corporate websites for corporate social responsibility (CSR) communication, identifying CSR communication patterns by continent. Design/methodology/approach -An analysis of the location of CSR information on the banks' corporate websites, a longitudinal analysis of the publication of CSR reports by the banks from 2000 to 2012, and a content analysis of the most current CSR reports in the recent period of study were undertaken. Findings -Three-quarters of the banks communicate on CSR issues on their corporate websiteeither located in the section "About Us" or under a separate "CSR" heading which is directly accessible on the front homepage. Company reports published on the website are the most important vehicle for CSR communication. Their publication increased from six for the publication year 2000 to a peak of 63 reports for the year 2011. The reports' titles are most commonly linked to the concepts of "responsibility" or "sustainability" and refer to ten main stakeholders and topics. In a comparison between continents there is a difference in the use of titles: European banks prefer the title "Sustainability Report", while Asian and American banks in particular prefer the title "CSR Report". Research limitations/implications -The paper focuses on corporate communications, and therefore does not address perspectives on CSR communication from other disciplines. Within CSR communication, sources of CSR-related information other than the corporate websites have not been considered. Originality/value -This paper gives the first comprehensive picture of the trend in CSR communication on corporate websites in the global banking sector. CSRccw as part of communication and stakeholder managementCompanies operate under the observation of their primary and secondary stakeholders, interact with them through stakeholder management and are dependent on positive stakeholder behaviour in order to achieve company goals (Schmid and Lyczek, 2008). This means that companies must not only respect legal legislation but also the expectations and demands of their stakeholders and society (Steyn and Niemann, 2010). Stakeholders must be made aware of the company's respect through corporate communications, and this task is integrated into the practice of communication management.Communication management has been defined in many ways and the term has often been used synonymously for public relatio...

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“…Of course, though the use of the reporting guidelines from an authoritative body such as the GRI would "attest to the seriousness of" what otherwise was a discretionary report (Hedberg & Malmborg, 2003), the importance of using globally accepted reporting guidelines should not be exaggerated because it could also have some unintended consequences. For example, following the guidelines and reporting on the activities could become the main goals for the sustainability initiative instead of assessing sustainability performance and responding appropriately to improve that performance (Vigneau, 2015). In spite of the volume of information published in some reports, it was not easy to distinguish between a genuine effort to remain socially and environmentally conscious as against the desire to remain compliant with the "norms" and be comparable to one"s peers.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sustainability Reporting by the Top 100 Companies in the S&P 500 Index: Findings from Some Recent Data

Pandit¹,

Rubenfield²

2018

IJBSS

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The research described in this paper examined sustainability reports and/or disclosures voluntarily published by some of the larger companies in the US for the year 2014. The term sustainability was considered interchangeable with corporate social responsibility in accordance with several of the past academic studies and the approach taken by the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI). Data collected from the stand-alone reports or the website-based disclosures for the top 100 S&P 500®companies showed that, while the number of companies that published such information had grown over the years, there was both considerable variation in the format and volume of the information published, and variety in the sustainability initiatives pursued by different companies.The study showed a need to bring comparability in the published data. Also, companies that published the data should use independent, external assurance services to enhance the credibility of such data, which happened only for less than half of the sample.

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How Do Firms Comply with International Sustainability Standards? Processes and Consequences of Adopting the Global Reporting Initiative

Cited by 175 publications

References 81 publications

Sustainability and Risk Disclosure: An Exploratory Study on Sustainability Reports

Sustainability and Risk Disclosure: An Exploratory Study on Sustainability Reports

CSR communication on corporate websites compared across continents

Sustainability Reporting by the Top 100 Companies in the S&P 500 Index: Findings from Some Recent Data

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