Stakeholders engagement in sustainability development and reporting: Evidence from Brazil

Abstract

This study examined the parameters of sustainability development (SD), sustainability reporting (SR) and the degree of stakeholders" engagement (SE) in the process of social control (SC) of the municipalities of ABCD of the greater São Paulo, Brazil. Historically, social responsibility reporting was initiated by multinational companies (MNC) to abridge the information gap between the organizations and its stakeholders. Thus, with increased attention towards sustainable business, reporting social and environmental dimension of operationsalongside their economic impactshas become rather common. In this same line of thought, in Brazil where transparency of public administration borrows a leaf from the fiscal responsibility Act (FRA) creates a rule of thumb that can be regularly monitored and supervised by stakeholders by imitating sustainable reporting. In this intent, transparency in public management has gone beyond disclosure of the instruments of fiscal transparency, and extends to the implementation of the concept of accountability, by enabling citizens to monitor and effectively participate in the acts of governance that cut across the society. As we are aware that stakeholder is a centrepiece of the reporting process worldwide, the SE has become very relevant. The municipalities of Santo Andre, São Bernardo do Campo, São Caetano do Sul, and Diadema-ABCD region selected for examination are very relevant to the Brazilian context in that they count as models for SD that is emulated by other municipalities of the country. As a result of the aforementioned, our research inquires into: what characterizes how, why, by whom and to which direction sustainability reporting is nurtured in Brazilian municipalities of ABCD? In order to provide for this question, we adopted a descriptive analysis of multi-case studies for the models of participation of the stakeholders in the sustainable enforcement. We performed content analysis on documents which focused on online interim reports for the periods of 2008, 2009 and 2010 retrieved from the archive of ABCD municipalities considering the criteria proposed by Global Reporting Initiative (GRI). Overall, our analysis of the data makes us to infer that in order to understand the SR in the Brazilian public agencies one ought to know the cornerstone of accountability and transparency that relies on the fiscal responsibility act. Thus, we built up the concept of "SR", by posing some propositions which could support researchers and practitioners to interpret the contextual background to understand reporting in an emerging economy such as Brazil. This in turn paves way for further studies such as comparing the SD and SR of the municipality in emerging countries with that of the developed economy.

On the relation between sustainability report and assurance standards in Brazilian financial institutions

“…Imoniana, Soares and Domingos (2019) upon analyses of sustainability accounting for emission reduction credit and compliance with emission rules call the attention of the regulating bodies to enforcement. Yet Imoniana, Domingos and Soares (2012) examined the parameters of sustainability development (SD), sustainability reporting (SR) and the degree of stakeholders" engagement (SE) in the process of social control (SC) of the municipalities of ABCD of the greater São Paulo, Brazil and confirm the individualization of disclosure. This self-centeredness' poses a risk of interpretation to the reports hereinafter presented.…”