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

Abstract

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.

Updating the Informational and Control Practices in the Sustainability Agenda

“…As was shown in the literature review, unidirectional studies mostly concentrated on isolated parts of information and control practices tending to improve accounting for sustainability, non-financial reporting, verification, and analytics. In this paper, some ideas of Chopra (2024); Fleaca et al, (2023), andMaas et al (2016), were developed and the holistic view is not presented sufficiently and could be applied with the developed model of the information practices cycle to improve information provision for sustainability.…”

“…"The capacity of society to comprehend knowledge pertaining to sustainable development determines its ability to respond to current challenges and opportunities" (Fleaca et al, 2023;Chan et al, 2020). Recent bibliometric studies analyse the newest trends around sustainability information overall and in some specific subject areas.…”

“…Pasko et al (2021) reasoned that "sustainability matters (e.g., sustainability reporting, corporate social responsibility, and sustainable development disclosure) seem to become the major research directions soon". The authors emphasized the fast expansion of the corporate sustainability data market, linking the rise in demand with the growth of investment products that "specifically aim to meet certain sustainability standards, the changing nature of business risks and investor awareness of the financial ramifications of those risks due to environmental issues, as well as rapidly evolving consumer preferences, market practices, and public awareness all contribute to this rise in demand" (Fleaca et al, 2023). Maas et al (2016) highlight four main related practices to bring ESG values in corporate operations which should have linked each other and included in an integrated system of organizational sustainability governance -assessment, accounting & control, reporting, and management.…”

“…So far under the umbrella of this organization there are three kinds of sustainability reporting standards -IFRS sustainability, SASB, and Integrated Reporting standards. Fleaca et al (2023) The issues of accounting for sustainability started to go on the fore in the 80s and passed several stages of numerous academic discussions. They embrace various strands of its theoretical framing, methodology, principles, scientific interlinking, intra-disciplinary partitions.…”

“…Being in the scope of research attention for decades the issues of information and control support sustainability governance have not been examined enough from a comprehensive angle. The spreadiest research pillars in the area considered are issues of corporate sustainability reporting evolution (Chopra, 2024;Fleaca et al, 2023;Miln & Gray, 2013), accounting for sustainability development (Bebbington & Larrinaga, 2014;Bebbington et al, 2017;Chetanraj & Kumar 2023;Chopra, 2024;Hopwood et al, 2010;Unerman & Chapman, 2014), sustainability performance, ESG-indicators and rating enforcement to manage policies, support responsible and impact investment, provide "green" capital allocation and evaluate sustainable development contribution of companies and countries (Fleaca et al, 2023;Halper et al, 2022;In et al, 2019;Luque-Vílchez et al, 2023, Sandberg et al, 2022. In this paper, we will focus mostly on the first two areas.…”