General Disregard for Details of GRI Human Rights Reporting by Large Corporations

Abstract

This article examines the web-based social responsibility reporting of the 100 largest companies in six broad industrial sectors to determine the extent to which the reporting follows the specific guidance of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) G3 Human Rights Performance Indicators (HR1-HR9). Ninety-seven of these companies have some sort of social information on their websites, and 95 of them have formal corporate responsibility reports. Seventy-one of these companies indicate that their reports were based on the G3 guidelines, and 66 of these provide a detailed index to them. The nine G3 HR guidelines can be subdivided into 17 specific items; six of them can be interpreted as requiring only that actions or measures taken be described, and these are widely followed, primarily in the form of policy statements. The remaining items, reported much less frequently, are quantitative, requiring total numbers or percentages of specific actions or incidents, or identification of operations in which such incidents are at significant risk. Thus, although the G3 guidelines for human rights reporting contemplate quantitative statements of performance, most of the reports examined for this article do not provide any, nor, for the most part, indicate why not. I argue that the reporting likely would be more informative if the guidelines were rewritten to request the nature of the processes and procedures the company is implementing for achieving the desired human rights outcomes, and the degree to which they are in place.

Sustainability Reporting by New Zealand's Local Governments

“…We believe that this strategy is consistent with the choice to focus on maintaining legitimacy (Suchman ) and the avoidance approach (O'Donovan ). Morhardt (: 152–3) offered possible explanations for the lack of compliance in this category. First, there is the issue of cost.…”

“…Further, from a practical aspect, Morhardt () advocated that much of the data requested by the GRI is both difficult to collect and not seen as valuable by the reporting organisations. These findings are very similar to previous studies by Guthrie and Farneti () and Morhardt (). In Australia, Guthrie and Farneti established that the two highest disclosures were in the Labour Practice and Public Agencies categories, and the lowest two were in the Human Rights and Society categories.…”

Applying GRI Sustainability Reporting in the Water Sector: Evidences from an Italian Company

“…In this field, the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) is the most common standard followed to implement and to develop sustainability reporting (Prado-Lorenzo et al, 2009;Brown et al, 2009;Gray, 2010;Roca & Searcy, 2012;Christofi et al, 2012;Mahoney et al, 2013;Fernandez-Feijoo et al;. However, the GRI standard has been criticized by authors who point out the dispersion of the sustainability principle (Moneva et al, 2006;Joseph, 2012) and by those who highlight that this practice can negatively influence the decision-making process (Aras & Crowther, 2008;Morhardt, 2009). Nevertheless, a few studies have focused on the real adoptability of the standard, highlighting the possible gaps between the content of the GRI framework and its use by the company.…”

Aspectos positivos e negativos no modelo de reporte proposto pela GRI: a opinião das organizações que reportam

“…Além disso, a literatura apresenta diversas críticas, como a de Morhardt (2009), que ao analisar as maiores empresas de 6 grandes setores da economia, segundo a classificação Fortune Global 500 sectors, totalizando uma amostra de 100 empresas, verificou que 75% das empresas na amostra adotaram este relatório como meio de divulgar o seu desempenho em sustentabilidade; mas que analisando especificamente o conjunto de indicadores Direitos Humanos, concluiu que muitas delas não disponibilizaram todas as informações requeridas, sendo um dos motivos o alto custo de sua obtenção, por serem difíceis de medir e sem grande utilidade para a empresa.…”

“…As diretrizes GRI são uma das mais adiantadas no sentido de conseguir promover um modelo de reporte (UTAMA, 2011); e esta satisfação das empresas com o modelo proposto já podia ser esperada, considerando-se, por exemplo, o grande aumento de empresas que adotaram as diretrizes GRI como padrão de reporte, além de serem utilizadas em diversas pesquisas como base para a análise dos relatórios das organizações (CALIXTO, 2013;CAMPOS et al, 2013;MORHARDT, 2009 …”