Sustainability Indicators: Information Asymmetry Mitigators between Cooperative Organizations and Their Primary Stakeholders

Abstract

The research aims to identify indicators of representative information on sustainability from the cooperative organizations’ primary stakeholders’ perspective to mitigate information asymmetry. The study develops in seven stages: the primary stakeholders’ selection and training; the evidence survey; the triangulation between stakeholder responses, forming an indicators list; the indicators analysis by specialists; tests for indicators disclosure; and the indicators validation through the disclosure analysis. As a result, a list contains 61 sustainability indicators from the primary stakeholders’ perspective, in four pillars: economic, 20; social, 18; environmental, 13; and cultural, 10. With the cooperative organizations’ websites disclosure analysis, we found that the disclosure policies focus more on information asymmetry mitigating in the pillars: cultural and social, with the environmental and economic being neglected. Therefore, the procedures for disclosing information on sustainability have weaknesses. These policies reduce the primary stakeholders’ reliability about the cooperatives management system respective, limiting the primary stakeholders’ perspective on the cooperative organization value.

Culture: A Pillar of Organizational Sustainability

“…This sustainability encompasses four dimensions. In addition to the three dimensions introduced by the triple bottom line: economic, social, and environmental [36], we included the cultural dimension as the focus of this book chapter [19,37,38].…”

“…This context makes the complex relationship between the sustainability pillars [45]. In short, economic, environmental, and social development is aimed at integrating all sustainability dimensions [19,20].…”

“…Recently, policies and research with new demands began to guide organizations, which must align activities with broader sustainable development agendas, including cultural, economic, social, and environmental issues [19,37]. It is necessary to integrate culture with sustainability because achieving its goals depends on human actions and behaviors that are culturally embedded and rooted [40].…”

“…That means the literature analyzes the disclosure level using indicators constructed from the analysis. On the other hand, research that presents the stakeholder's perspective is much more restricted [12,[19][20][21][22][23]. Also, the study concentrates on the sustainability tripod, namely: economic, environmental, and economic, without including information about cultural sustainability identified as forming the fourth sustainability pillar for organizations.…”

“…By disclosing sustainability information, organizations increase transparency, increasing the organization's management reliability, reputation, and legitimacy, strengthening the relationship between management, customers, and employees [19,24]. They can also allow benchmarking against competitors, signal competitiveness, motivate employees, and support information encouraging organizational culture [25,26].…”