Capturing the Stakeholders’ View in Sustainability Reporting: A Novel Approach

Abstract

Sustainability reporting is the process by which companies describe how they deal with their own economic, environmental, and social impacts, thus making stakeholders able to recognize the value of sustainable practices. As stressed in the Global Reporting Initiative guidelines, which act as a de facto standard for sustainability reporting, sustainable reports should take into account the stakeholders' view. In particular, engaging stakeholders is essential to carry out the materiality analysis, by which organizations can identify their own more relevant sustainability aspects. Yet, on the one hand, the existing guidelines do not provide specific indications on how to get stakeholders actually engaged; on the other hand, research on quantitative techniques to support stakeholder engagement in materiality analysis is scarce. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is the development of a quantitative structured approach based on multi-attribute group decision-making techniques to effectively and reliably support stakeholder engagement during materiality analysis in sustainability reporting. As it more strictly guides the reporting process, the proposed approach at the same time simplifies materiality analysis and makes it more reliable. Though any company can adopt the approach, small-and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are expected to particularly benefit from it, due to the quite limited implementation effort that is required. With this respect, the approach has been validated on a sample of Italian SMEs belonging to different sectors.

Materiality Analysis in Sustainability Reporting: A Method for Making It Work in Practice

“…Moreover, in order to ensure completeness of analysis, GRI G4 guidelines recommend to take into account different stakeholder views. To achieve this aim, companies should adopt a constructive and contributory evaluation approach, aimed at mediating potential conflicts and divergences among stakeholders' opinions (Bellantuono et al, 2016;Elias et al, 2004). In addition, the consistency of judgments should be tested for avoiding or mitigating judgment contradictions (Alonso and Lamata, 2006).…”

Organizational Sustainability Practices: A Study of the Firms Listed by the Corporate Sustainability Index

“…These results corroborate the findings of [50], which clearly demonstrate that organizations are constantly monitored by their investors and civil society, meeting the demands of stakeholders and other interested parts. Bellantuono et al [51] argue that the stakeholders' participation is crucial for the development of a strategy with clear-cut objectives in the environmental aspect.…”

Stakeholder engagement in sustainability reporting in higher education

“…In SR, another important principle is "Stakeholder Inclusiveness", which recognises stakeholder engagement as a tool for understanding the expectations and interests of stakeholders (Global Reporting Initiative, 2013). Engaging stakeholders is essential for an appropriate analysis of materiality, by which organisations can identify their own more relevant sustainability aspects (Bellantuono et al, 2016) and develop complete and useful SR (AccountAbility, 2015;Global Reporting Initiative, 2013). Nevertheless, in the academic world, the relevance of HEI stakeholder engagement and the materiality process in the SR process remains rarely studied (Adams, 2013;Alonso-Almeida et al, 2014;Ceulemans et al, 2015a;Ceulemans et al, 2015b;Lozano, 2011).…”