Corporate sustainability

About: Corporate sustainability is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 3517 publications have been published within this topic receiving 94075 citations.

Sustainability reporting in Norway – an assessment of performance in the context of legal demands and socio‐political drivers

Abstract: This article explores the influence of societal, political and regulatory characteristics and developments on the quality of corporate sustainability disclosures in Norway. The paper presents an assessment both of mandatory reporting under the Norwegian Accounting Act, and of voluntary reporting in annual and separate non-financial reports, by the 100 largest firms in Norway. Our results reveal that only 10% of the companies comply with the legal requirements on environmental reporting, while only half of the firms comply with the legal reporting provisions on working environment and gender equality. The vast majority of firms also report unsatisfactorily on non-financial issues in the voluntary disclosures assessed. Analysing the causes of these results, we contend that the situation is characterized by (1) an apparent lack of political and social drivers for sustainability reporting in Norway and (2) an absence of sufficient monitoring and enforcement of the environmental reporting legislation on the part of Norwegian authorities. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.

Harmonising non-financial reporting regulation in Europe: Practical forces and projections for future research

Abstract: Motivated by the new European Union Directive 2014/95 on non-financial and diversity information, this paper aims to develop a future research agenda to conduct pragmatic, theory-oriented research into the Directive and corporate sustainability reporting.,Drawing upon the relational dynamics between states, firms and society in regulating non-financial reporting (NFR), this essay frames and analyses the Directive and its grand theories, as unproven theories, by discussing its practical concerns and reviewing the academic literature.,The Directive is an act of policy to legitimise NFR that encompasses two grand theories: improve the comparability of information and enhance corporate accountability. From a pluralist perspective, companies can rest assure that their compliance with the Directive will be perceived as socially desirable, proper and appropriate. However, some of the forces involved in translating the Directive into actionable policies operate contra to the Directive’s goals and, instead, act as barriers to its grand theories. In addressing these barriers, a research agenda is proposed that both traces backward to re-examine the foundational theories of the past and looks forward to explore alternative possibilities for achieving these goals.,This paper provides researchers with a practical-driven and theory-oriented agenda for future research in light of the rising academic interest in the Directive.,The barriers to the Directive’s grand theories help policymakers and practitioners to understand the practical concerns about the implementation of the Directive and other mandatory NFR policies.,This paper enriches the emerging debate on the Directive and highlights future possibilities for fruitful empirical research by developing a research agenda.

KPMG International Survey of Corporate Sustainability Reporting 2002

Abstract: Forty-five percent of the Fortune global top 250 companies (GFT250) are now issuing environmental, social or sustainability reports in addition to their financial reports. Globally, more companies than ever are publishing reports on their environmental, social and sustainability performance and an increasing number are having these reports independently verified. These are some of the findings of a comprehensive survey of corporate sustainability reports by KPMG's Global Sustainability Services, in collaboration with the Graduate Business School of the University of Amsterdam. Similar surveys were held in 1993, 1996 and 1999. The 2002 survey also reveals that: Of the GFT250 companies surveyed, 45 percent published a separate corporate report on their performance, compared to 35 percent in 1999. Of the top 100 companies in each of the 19 countries surveyed, Japan has the highest percentage (72 percent) of companies producing corporate reports, followed by the UK (49 percent), USA (36 percent), Netherlands (35 percent), Finland (32 percent) and Germany (32 percent). Health, Safety and Environment (HSE) are still the most common types of report, but others are emerging including sustainability and social reports.

Beyond the Bounded Instrumentality in Current Corporate Sustainability Research: Toward an Inclusive Notion of Profitability

Abstract: We argue that the majority of the current approaches in research on corporate sustainability are inconsistent with the notion of sustainable development. By defining the notion of instrumentality in the context of corporate sustainability through three conceptual principles we show that current approaches are rooted in a bounded notion of instrumentality which establishes a systematic a priori predominance of economic organizational outcomes over environmental and social aspects. We propose an inclusive notion of profitability that reflects the return on all forms of environmental, social, and economic capital used by a firm. This inclusive notion of corporate profitability helps to redefine corporate profitability as if sustainability matters in that it overcomes the bounded instrumentality that impairs current research on corporate sustainability. We apply this notion to different car manufacturers and develop conceptual implications for future research on corporate sustainability.