Assurance Services for Sustainability Reports: Standards and Empirical Evidence

Abstract

ABSTRACT. This article contributes to the growing scholarship on the topic of assurance services for sustainability reports. We first synthetically illustrate the main international standards for the implementation of assurance services regarding the subject documents. The second part of our article is an empirical analysis of reports drawn up on the basis of the current Global Reporting Initiative 2006 guidelines, and looks at how effectively these standards have been implemented, analyzing the different typologies of assurance statement.

Multinationals’ Accountability on Sustainability: The Evolution of Third-party Assurance of Sustainability Reports

“…A debate has arisen in the accounting and business ethics literatures focused on structural deficiencies that supposedly undermine the credibility of such novel verification mechanisms (Ball et al 2000;Deegan et al 2006;Manetti and Becatti 2009;Jamali 2010;Boiral and Gendron 2011;Smith et al 2011). What is missing in the extant literature is an analysis of how sustainability assurance diffused over time, in different national contexts, and taking into account different types of auditors involved and standards used.…”

“…management and employees) and external (e.g. stakeholders) audiences has accelerated the development of relevant assurance standards (FEE 2004;Zadek and Raynard 2004;FEE 2006;Manetti and Becatti 2009). In addition to the Sustainability Reporting Guidelines by GRI previously mentioned, two international standards used by assurance practitioners to provide sustainability assurance but designed for different objectives have taken a dominant role.…”

“…Fundamental concerns have been raised in empirical studies over crucial aspects of sustainability assurance (see Deegan et al 2006 for a review), such as assuror independence in the verification assessment (Ball et al 2000), major inconsistencies regarding scope of assurance, criteria employed and levels of assurance provided (Manetti and Becatti 2009) Such concerns and weaknesses can be explained using a neo-institutional lens which seeks to explain how organizations adopt similar ideas or structures in order to conform to external expectations and gain legitimacy (Deegan, 2002;DiMaggio and Powell, 1983). Since the adoption and implementation of organizational practices takes place in an institutionalized social and cultural context (which is distinct from the corresponding technical context), neoinstitutional scholars argue that conformity to institutional norms creates structural similarities or isomorphism across organizations (DiMaggio and Powell 1983;Scott 2001).…”

Managing Reputational Risk through Environmental Management and Reporting: An Options Theory Approach

“…However, some individual countries' accounting authorities have also issued specific standards for the auditing of sustainability reports. We refer to the work of Manetti and Becatti [21] to examine some critical points of present assurance services on sustainability reports, as well as a number of suggested improvements for future assurance standards. Ackers, Eccles, and Parker [22] state also that voluntary CSR assurance has resulted in the inconsistent application of CSR assurance practices, and argue that this deficiency may be overcome through the imposition of a mandatory CSR assurance regime.…”

The Role of Stakeholders in Sustainability Reporting Assurance

“…This, however, takes place in a dynamic and changing context, where SR and SR assurance models and tools are constantly changing, according to organizational needs and indications from practice and from experts (Edgley et al 2010). Moreover, currently at international level, SR and SR assurance-with rare exceptions-are voluntary processes whose costs are generally borne by the assured corporation and that are carried out based on standards and guidelines that are totally discretionary for corporations (Manetti and Becatti 2009). Primarily, these assurance services standards and guidelines have been drawn up by private not-for-profit organizations (e.g., AccountAbility 2008), by international accounting organizations (e.g., Fe´de´ration des Experts Comptables Europe´ens-FEE, International Auditing and Assurance Standard Board-IAASB of the International Federation of Accountants-IFAC) or by national bodies, both from the accounting sector (e.g.…”