Stakeholder expectations on CSR management and current regulatory developments in Europe and Germany

Abstract

The new European Directive 2014/95/EU extends the corporate disclosure of public interest entities (PIE) in the EU by a non-financial statement. The new member state option allows either the integration of these sustainability-related aspects into the traditional management report or the preparation of a separate report in line with established CSR guidelines -for example a sustainability report in accordance with the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) guidelines or an integrated report in accordance with the International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC) framework. However it is unclear which sustainability-related aspects as a key instrument of CSR management should be prospectively disclosed. Although the EU is seeking for concretization hereof, the member states are facing the challenge of implementing this Directive without any specific instructions or definition of sectoral key performance indicators to be disclosed. Based on a German survey of various stakeholder groups the present article explores, which sustainability-related aspects are useful for their decisions and could be therefore disclosed within the management report in accordance with the GRI guidelines.

Is audit committee expertise connected with increased readability of integrated reports: Evidence from EU companies

“…Given the principle-based approach of the IIRC framework and the extensive heterogeneity of reports at present, this research addressed a question that is of key importance to the decision usefulness of integrated reporting. The connection between audit committees' expertise and understandable integrated reports has become extremely important in EU member states, in view of the increased number of reform initiatives in these areas (Müller et al, 2015). Specific PIE's must publish a nonfinancial declaration either in the management report or on the firm website.…”

Eu Non-Financial Reporting Research – Insights, Gaps, Patterns and Future Agenda

“…Manes-Rossi et al, 2018;Dumitru et al, 2017) and "Survey/Questionnaire/Other empirical" (e.g. Müller et al, 2015), while the theoretical ones were divided into "Commentary/ Normative/Policy (e.g. Ahern, 2016;Saenger, 2017) and "Literature review".…”

“…Furthermore, it is considered a weakness of the company that does not make an assurance of the non-financial statement (Buhmann, 2018). Thus, since assurance of sustainability information is an essential aspect for the investors in their decisions that can increase the relevance, consistency, comparability, reliability and truthfulness of information reported (Aureli et al, 2019;Müller et al, 2015;Grewal et al, 2018), if a company decide only to do a formal review of the non-financial statement (Müller et al, 2015), that information will not present a value for investors (Fijałkowska, 2016).…”

“…As a result, it is seen as a kind of "all things for all people" that creates ambiguity in interpretation (Eccles & Spiesshofer, 2015). By this freedom in choosing different formats and reporting frameworks (Müller et al, 2015), the comparability, consistency and uniformity of information are limited, while the comparisons of companies' performances are difficult to achieve, even within the same sector (Eccles & Spiesshofer, 2015). Moreover, the EUD does not impose strict and detailed rules for disclosure, being ambiguous as regards the materiality (Aureli et al, 2018) and the minimum of information to disclose (Fijałkowska, 2016;Coluccia et al, 2018), as well as lacking sanctions for not implementing it.…”

Integrated Report System in Italian Law

“…A significant observation is suggested by Müller (2015): the popularity of sustainability reports has increased since the financial crisis (2008/09). In this regard, however, the acquisition and implementation of new instances in enterprises' daily life and operations must be considered a turning point.…”