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26 Gray and Herremans revised-1c.doc 05/06/2019 1
CHAPTER 24:
Sustainability and Social Responsibility Reporting and the Emergence of the
External Social Audits: The Struggle for Accountability?
Rob Gray and Irene Herremans
A later version of this was published as Gray R and I. Herremans (2012) “Sustainability and Social
Responsibility Reporting and the Emergence of the External Social Audits: The Struggle for
Accountability?” Chapter 22 in Oxford Handbook of Business and the Environment, (Eds) T. Bansal
and A. Hoffman (Oxford: Oxford University Press) pp405-424
Society’s definition of accountability has broadened to include a diversified set of
stakeholders, a rigorous assessment of performance on multiple dimensions, and
communication of results in many different formats. Yet, the business community’s
definition of accountability has been restricted only to those dimensions that affect
financial performance. As all organisations have a range of interactions with society
and the natural environment that are not captured in the financial statements alone
(Cho et al [Chapter 23], this volume), the organisation’s stakeholders (Kassinis,
[Chapter 5], this volume) may have a desire for – even a right to – information about
aspects of its environmental (and social) performance beyond the narrow definition
of financial accountability. With the recent formation of the International Integrated
Reporting Committee (IIRC) the multi-dimensional definition of accountability is in
the process of becoming legitimized by the business community. The IIRC is a joint
effort by the IFAC (International Federation of Accountants), the Global Reporting
Initiative (GRI), and The Prince's Accounting for Sustainability Project. It, along
with other initiatives, is shifting the major emphasis of reporting from short-term
financial performance to the long-term consequences of decision-making by including
non-financial indicators of environmental and social, along with financial
performance.
26 Gray and Herremans revised-1c.doc 05/06/2019 2
This chapter discusses the current state of accountability and how it is
evolving to embrace environmental, social, and sustainability accountability,
reporting, and disclosure.
Organisations communicate with stakeholders in many ways including through such
vehicles as the financial statements and annual report, advertising, seminars, lobbying,
the website, one-off and special reports and so on. As the vehicles open to
organisations have developed, so has the interest of researchers. Particularly,
researchers with an interest in organisational accountability have traditionally focused
upon statutory and non-statutory disclosures in the annual report (Cho et al, Ch23, this
edition; Gray et al., 1995a; 1995b; 1996). However, for the last two decades, our
attention has increasingly been drawn to the relatively recent emergence of a new type
of report – the `stand-alone’. More recently still, we begin to see increasing interest in
the corporate use of websites as a medium of disclosure (Patten and Crampton, 2004;
Lodhia, 2005). Whilst a comprehensive examination of organisational accountability
would require an analysis of all the media used by an organisation (Zeghal and
Ahmed, 1990) this has rarely been undertaken in the literature. This lacuna arises, in
part, because there is a distinct sense that different media are used to talk about
different issues – and probably to talk to different constituents. It also arises, in part,
because there is significant overlap (even information redundancy) between the
material contained in the different media, such that the website, for example, will
reproduce and thereby duplicate hard copy annual reports and stand-alone reports
(Freedman and Stagliano, 2004). But the research has also limited its attentions for
reasons of practicality because the process of collating and synthesising such a diverse
range of media is a daunting task, the value of which is not always apparent (although
see, for example, Unerman, 2000).
26 Gray and Herremans revised-1c.doc 05/06/2019 3
In this chapter we want to explore the actual and potential widening of
environmental (and social) accountability to a range of constituents. Whilst Cho et al
([Chapter 23], this volume) have focused upon the annual report and the process of
reporting predominantly to stockholders and financial markets, we draw our interest
wider and focus on the (relatively) recent phenomena of both the stand-alone reports
and emergence of `counter-accounting’ by civil society.
Stand-alone reports have appeared under many names from `Environmental
Reports’, `Citizenship Reports’ to even `Sustainability Reports’1. What particularly
makes these stand-alone reports remarkable is that they represent a very clear
engagement by corporations with the increasingly critical issues of environmental
stewardship, social responsibility and planetary sustainability at a time when society’s
well-being and the planet itself are under unique levels of threat. Indeed, such
reporting has every appearance of a voluntary accountability by many of the world’s
corporations. Such accountability is very clearly needed but it is not entirely clear that
these voluntary reports are actually increasing accountability – as opposed to
increasing the appearance of such accountability. So despite a remarkable and
impressive growth in forms of voluntary disclosure there has been, perversely it might
almost seem, a steady growth in the activities of civil society organisations which
have sought to develop independent accounts of corporate activity (generally known
as `external social audits’).
A number of initial observation should be made.
First, our brief will necessarily take us broader than business and the natural
environment. Any sensible understanding of the natural environment cannot be easily
separated from (as Ehrenfeld [Chapter35] this volume) either an explicit recognition
1 The term `sustainability report’ has become the over-riding label of choice and is used
widely (if erroneously) to refer generically to reports which provide social, environmental
and/or economic information and sometimes (again erroneously) interchangeably with CSR.
26 Gray and Herremans revised-1c.doc 05/06/2019 4
of societal interactions with, and mediation of, that environment or a recognition of
the planetary context of social and environmental sustainability. Therefore, to talk of
environmental accountability without a recognition of the societies about whom and
to whom the accountability is owed would be facile. Equally, to talk of environmental
stewardship with no recognition of planetary (un)sustainability would be, largely, to
miss the principal point.
Second, the way in which corporate reporting has developed has blurred any
distinctions that might be drawn between social, environmental and sustainability
reporting. Although early reporting related explicitly to environmental reporting; this
has not been the case from about the mid-1990s when such voluntary disclosure
became entwined with social responsibility and then, eventually, the so-called triple
bottom line and sustainability reporting. The distinctions are not helpful in this
context of corporate accountability and we will not maintain them here.
Finally, there are materially different interpretations of corporate reporting
behaviour, its progress and how it might be improved, which depend upon whether
one is adopting a business-centred (managerialist, marginalist) perspective or a
society/planetary (holistic, radical) perspective. We shall seek to provide evidence and
argument in support of and deriving from both points of view.
The chapter is organised as follows. We first explore the meaning of the
stand-alone report, its recent history, and some of the parameters of this phenomenon.
We then examine some conflicting views: different ways in which this remarkable
and largely voluntary activity might be evaluated. Then, from amanagerial
perspective, weidentify a number of the challenges which corporations face when
undertaking this voluntary reporting. After that, we introduce the use, reliability, and
attestation of these stand-alone reports. In the next section, we offer a different view
26 Gray and Herremans revised-1c.doc 05/06/2019 5
of accountability that focuses less on what the organisation might wish to say about
itself and more on what civil society, faced with an absence of what it believes to be
real accountability, says about it: what `accounts’ those external to the organisation
might propose and produce. Finally, we tease out a few conclusions and suggest some
of the ways in which the relationships between civil society, the market and the state
might be better mediated in the interests of democracy.
THE EMERGENCE OF STAND-ALONE REPORTING
Business’ disclosure of data concerning its social and environmental interactions is,
for the most part, a voluntary act. Despite the increasing regulation of such disclosure
in countries as diverse as Australia, Denmark, France, and Korea (for example) the
systematic reporting of social and environmental information is undertaken only
partially for legal reasons: voluntary disclosure is undertaken for the business’ own
(often complex) reasons. (See Cho et al. [Chapter 23] this volume)
The growth of voluntary disclosure in the corporate annual report, the
emergence of experimental social and environmental accounts and the growth in
employee reporting from the mid-1960s onwards forms the basis for most of the study
of social and environmental reporting, (AICPA, 1977; Estes, 1976; Gray et al. , 1996).
It was only with the emergence of the stand-alone reports in the 1990s that this
emphasis began to change.
It is difficult to be certain what brought about this change but the 1980s was
perhaps a pivotal decade. The widespread stagnant or low growth, high levels of debt
(especially in developing countries), and (perhaps ironically) the surge of neo-
liberalism coupled with a range of highly visible industrial disasters (such as Bhopal,
Chernobyl and the Exxon Valdez) all seem to have played a part in changing
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expectations: expectations which were perhaps crystallized in the Brundtland
Commission (UNWCED, 1987).
The first major examples of the stand-alone reports were the environmental
reports from companies such as British Airways, Noranda Minerals and Norsk Hydro
in the early 1990s. These first examples were soon joined by a growing range of
reports from both large international companies and, increasingly, from a range of
smaller organisations. The development of reporting was stimulated and supported by
a disparate range of initiatives including the range of guidance and cajolery from
industry, governmental and professional organisations (see, for example, United
Nations, 1992; International Chamber of Commerce, 1991; Public Environmental
Reporting Initiative (PERI) Guidelines, 1994).
By the mid- to late-1990s, the notion of a purely environmental report was
giving way to a recognition of the importance of social issues, and we see reports now
named as (for example) corporate social responsibility or citizenship reports. This
development in turn was overtaken by the affectation to refer to the stand-alone
reports as a sustainability report by the turn of the century. Whatever their titles,
reports now typically address an interwoven set of social, environmental and
economic issues.
The development of these stand-alone reports has continued to gain pace and
in addition to the plethora of academic studies that they have attracted, their progress
has been systematically monitored and assessed by SustainAbility/UNEP (see, for
example, 1996; 2002;) and KPMG (1997 et seq.). Table 1 provides a collation of data
taken from KPMG’s surveys of the reporting practices of some of the world’s larger
companies.
TABLE 1 about here
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The trend in reporting is clearly upwards (although see Norway in 2005 and
the USA in 1999), and apart from some return to integrating reporting into the annual
report, it looks likely to continue (although see Pallenberg et al, 2006). However, it is
important to note that (i) reporting continues to be dominated by the very largest
companies (nearly 80% of the Global 250 produce reports whereas less than half of
each country’s top 100 does so) and (ii) after nearly 20 years of a voluntary initiative,
it is still the case that less than half of a country’s large companies are likely to report
regularly.
Attempts to establish guidelines for voluntary reporting that would be widely
accepted and widely adopted met with only limited success until the establishment of
the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI). GRI is a multi-stakeholder attempt to establish
a framework and generally accepted reporting principles for environmental, social,
and sustainability reporting, similar to generally accepted accounting principles for
financial reports. The G3 Guidelines (the 3rd edition, current at the time of writing)
contain principles and guidance on content, quality, and report boundaries. They
suggest standard disclosures for an organization’s strategic profile, management
approach, and performance indicators in an attempt to make reports more
standardized and comparable among organizations worldwide. These Guidelines are
supplemented by sector-specific guidance. Organisations are then invited to comply
with the Guidelines and to lodge their compliance on the GRI website2. Table 2 shows
the numbers of organisations that have done this.
TABLE 2 ABOUT HERE
The organisations represented in Table 2 (which may, possibly, be only the
self-declaring tip of the GRI reporting iceberg) are much more diverse than those
2 At the time of writing, GRI has become a major element of a new initiative known as the
International Integrated Reporting Committee which is seeking to develop a synthesis of
sustainability an financial reporting for all organisations.
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upon which KPMG focuses. The GRI list includes not just the largest corporations but
also (for example) universities, small values-based businesses; social enterprises and
non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and covers a much wider range of countries.
Comparing Tables 1 and 2 also shows that in some countries, (Australia, Brazil and
Spain being the most obvious) it is not the larger companies that dominate stand-alone
reporting.
These data allow us to conclude that whilst stand-alone reporting is very
diverse, widespread and growing, it is by no means ubiquitous. Inevitably, that begs
the question of whether or not a lack of ubiquity matters. This, in turn, leads to us to
consider what these reports contain, their reliability and their importance. In essence,
how do we interpret this remarkable, global voluntary phenomenon? This is the task
of the next section.
THE EMERGING CONFLICTS
Although this widespread voluntary phenomenon appears to suggest that
business can voluntarily demonstrate its accountability, its responsibility, and its
sustainability, this may be an unreliable inference. (See, for example, Walley and
Whitehead, 1994; Milne et al, 2009; Milne and Gray, 2007; Gray 2006; 2010;
Moneva et al, 2006).
Two immediate problems present themselves. First, stand-alone reporting is
only undertaken by a minority of organisations. For illustration, there are estimated to
be approximately 60,000 multi-national corporations in the world; of these, it seems
likely that less 2,000 actually report, (ACCA/Corporate Register, 2004; UNCTAD,
2005; Pallenberg et al, 2006). Second, the reports are usually designed to suggest a
positive image of the organisation’s activities and are essentially one–sided and
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incomplete, although not without a recognition of challenges and problems.
Therefore, the reporting is sometimes superficial and thus not relevant and useful to
decision makers. (Figure 1 offers a few illustrations of this).
FIGURE 1 ABOUT HERE
In general, the stand-alone reports say a lot about what an organisation would
like the reader to see as its responsibility. What a reader of most stand-alone reports
will not learn is the extent to which the corporation is (or is not) satisfying the
responsibility and accountability that society(ies) ask of it (Mintzberg, 1983, Cooper
and Owen, 2007). If corporations are not (and perhaps cannot be) environmentally
responsible or sustainable, then society really needs to know this. However, the
current state of disclosure leaves the various segments of society unable to judge the
state of sustainability of many corporations.
The argument is fairly straightforward. The most widely used standard of
sustainability reporting is the GRI Guidelines. In 2009, 1,290 organisations, a very
small proportion of the world’s significant organisations, had registered as having
produced a report that recognised these Guidelines. Of those 1,290 organisations, by
no means all fully comply with the GRI Guidelines. Let us be generous and suggest
that 1,000 comply fully. The GRI Guidelines are a rough approximation of the “Triple
Bottom Line” (Elkington, 1997, also see Klassen and Vachon, [Chapter 15] this
volume). All commentators agree that the GRI Guidelines are a work in progress and
they do not capture the full Triple Bottom Line (Henriques and Richardson, 2004).
More robust analysis suggests that they do not yet even come close, especially on
social indicators (Moneva et al, 2006; Milne and Gray, 2002; Gray 2006).
Furthermore, the Triple Bottom Line does not – and in all probability cannot - provide
guidance on the extent to which an organisation is contributing to or detracting from
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the sustainability of social and ecological systems. The Triple Bottom Line, in
principle, can represent a first step towards (un)sustainability reporting but it is not
sustainability reporting.
Indeed, a priori reasoning would suggest that it is much more likely to be the
case that all commercial organisations are actually un-sustainable. Therefore, as
citizens and researchers we would be wiser to approach the issues of business and the
natural environment with this assumption and work to invite rejection of the
contention: as opposed to assuming the corollary and leaving society to try and
ascertain whether or not it is true. (See, also Gladwin et al., 1995; York et al., 2003;
Ehrenfeld, Ch35 this edition).
The crucial point is that the stand-alone report does not provide evidence
which might enable a reader assess an organisation’s environmental impacts, let alone
its contribution to (un)sustainability. The documents are self-evidently valuable from
a managerial point of view: the evidence is fairly compelling that they may be
misleading from society’s (and the planet’s) point of view. Why would that be? That
is what we address in the next section.
THE EMERGING CHALLENGES
Whilst it is important to understand that there is a range of societal views that
might challenge what a corporation claims as its social responsibility and its
sustainability, it is equally important to understand how it is that an organisation
might arrive at a position to make such claims. Only then is it possible to grasp the
rationale that drives much current voluntary reporting and, perhaps more relevantly,
suggest how those who wish to improve such reporting might seek to engage with it.
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Despite the range of theories of voluntary reporting (Gray et al., 2010), when
seen through the eyes of the reporting entity decisions about whether to and what to
report seem a little simpler. Putting aside the more consciously cynical attempts by
corporations to mislead their relevant publics, reporting has to fit the logic of the
organisation and sit comfortably in one form or other of a business case. It is a truism
therefore to say that such reporting must be (on the whole) managerialist, marginalist,
and predominantly in the interests of the organisation.
There are then a range of issues that affect how those organisational decisions
are translated into reporting practice. We touch on just a few of these here.
Diversity of views and understandings. Corporate social responsibility
(CSR) and sustainability remain highly contested terms and ones which are
understood differently by different individuals and groups, by different organisations,
and by different industries, (Wood, 1991; Herremans et al, 2008). Notwithstanding
Mintzberg’s suggestions (1983) about the societal basis of responsibility and
notwithstanding the evidential basis of sustainability (species extinction, poverty,
water shortages, global climate change, etc), organisations are likely to continue to
understand the term differently and articulate cases for reporting accordingly.
So for most organisations, it is not a case of seeking to take the Brundtland
definition (for example) and translate that into organisational logics (Herremans et al.,
2008) but rather it is a case that the notions implicit in Brundtland are mediated, first
through international bodies such as World Business Council for Sustainable
Development, The International Chamber of Commerce, and the GRI; and then the
message from these bodies is mediated again into the sense-making and business case
for the organisation itself, (see, for example, Angus-Leppan et al., 2009; Gray and
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Bebbington, 2000). It is little wonder that understandings of sustainability and CSR
are thus interpreted in many different ways.
Diversity of responses. Broad brush explanations of reporting behaviour,
although not without empirical support, fail to capture and explain the differences
both within and between organisations and how those differences manifest themselves
in reporting, (see, for example, Buhr, 2002; Matten and Moon, 2008; Angus-Leppan
et al. 2009).
Materiality and information systems. Organisations need information
systems to support their reporting, substantiate any claims therein and to help identify
risks and exposures (Buhr and Gray [Chapter 22], this volume). Organisational
information systems develop in those areas that the organisation considers material
but it is less clear how the organisation judges the materiality of the demands of
stakeholders for information which, on the face of it, are not cost-effective to collate.
Whilst the company will understand the salience of its stakeholders sufficiently, it is
not necessarily the case that it will have an equally sufficient grasp on information
salience.
Selection and balance. How does the organisation select from the very wide
range of potential information that it could report? Decisions will have to be made in
order to provide a report which the organisation judges to be balanced and fair, which
reflects the information that is available and perceived as needed, and recognises that
many stakeholders are likely to be sceptical about the report, and so the report must
appear to be credible and reliable. Greenwashing is not a charge any organisation
wants to face but, equally, a company will be reluctant to disclose data that are likely
to attract unwanted and unpleasant attention.
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Comparability. The most obvious form of guidance for a reporting
organisation is the GRI. With its increasing development of industry-specific
guidelines, GRI offers the organisation a sensible and defensible strategy for its
reporting choices. However, the organisation is also going to be concerned about how
its own performance is represented vis-à-vis its competitors; and as the diverse
experiences with (for example) accounting for carbon have shown the corporate world
is some way from reliably comparable reports (Kolk et al., 2008). It is in this
connection that the views of the users and the role of assurance take on more
importance.
USERS, ASSURANCE AND THE STAND-ALONE REPORT
The examination of the extent to which corporate information satisfies the
wants and needs of those who use the data has a very long – although perhaps not so
glorious - history in accounting and accounting research. Such concerns have
extended into the examination of the production of non-financial disclosure in both
the corporate annual report and, more recently, the stand-alone reports. This line of
research might usefully be thought of as having two strands: one concerned with the
needs and responses of financial participants (Cho et al, [Chapter 23] this volume,
Russo and Minto, [Chapter 2] this volume); and one concerned with other
stakeholders and their responses to the data, (which we address here). (See also
Kassinis, [Chapter 5], this volume).
The enquiry into the needs and wants of non-financial participants suggests
that current voluntary social and environmental disclosure fails to meet the
expectation and needs of stakeholders, (Deegan and Rankin, 1999; O’Dwyer et al,
2005). Broadly speaking, this should not surprise us: voluntary disclosure is primarily
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designed to meet corporate needs rather than stakeholders’ needs: the two sets of
needs are rarely entirely aligned. Of perhaps more concern is the finding that social
and environmental disclosure also fails to meet the needs of the socially responsible
investment community, (Freidman and Miles, 2001; Solomon and Solomon, 2006;
Hunt III and Grinnell, 2004; Solomon and Darby, 2005).
Two of the key lacunae that the literature has identified in the reporting
processes – especially concerning the stand-alone report - relate to extent to which the
stakeholders themselves have been involved in the reporting process (typically
referred to as stakeholder dialogue) and the reliability of the information produced in
these reports (typically referred as the assurance issue).
The growth in stakeholder dialogue as part of an organisation’s responsibility
and accountability processes has the appearance of a very positive development.
However stakeholder dialogue would seem to be more dominated by appearance than
by substance (Owen et al, 2000; 2001). It is this, that Cooper and Owen (2007)
conclude, is the central (but currently missing) ingredient that might turn a
managerialist reporting function into a genuine process of accountability.
In addition to involving the stakeholders, the stand-alone reports need to be
something upon which a reader can rely. Such reliability has two principal threads:
completeness and trustworthiness. We have already questioned whether the
information contained in most sustainability reports can be realistically considered to
be either complete or entirely satisfying of users’ wants. A similar conclusion is
reluctantly reached in the explorations of the quality of assurance.
We have already seen that a sensible organisation will ensure that it has a
structure, an information system and decision process in place so that any resultant
report is reliable and defensible. In addition, many organisations require that the
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Board sign off on the report so that the whole organisation is committed to the stand-
alone report. These are important internal assurance processes. The usual way to try to
add external credibility to the report – to convince the readers that the report is
balanced and fair - would be to have the report assured in some way. (The analogue
with the statutory audit of the financial statements is obvious). The simplest and least
expensive way of approaching this process is to ask a number of stakeholders to read
and comment upon the report. These comments may then be included in the report
with suggestions for improvements. The more systematic and expensive approach is
to employ an independent consultancy or audit firm who will provide an assurance
statement about (for example) the reliability, completeness, balance and accuracy of
the report. Increasingly, the investigation that underlies the statement of assurance
follows one of the international guidelines such as AA1000 or ISEA 3000, (Leipziger,
2010).
The value of such assurance can prove elusive, however. Although the number of
reports that contain assurances is rising, still less than 50% of reports are assured
(KPMG, 2008). If assurance is valuable, then over 50% of reports may be considered
as deserving some scepticism. However, Ball et al. (2000) and O’Dwyer and Owen
(2005) conclude that in many cases, the careful reading of the assurance statement
will lead to the conclusion that the existence of an assurance statement in itselfmay
not warrant increased confidence in the accuracy of the information that has been
assured. (See also, Henriques, and Richardson, 2004). Because the assurance
procedures, the qualifications of the assurance providers, and the assurance statements
themselves vary considerable from report to report and are not standardized at this
time, a user must read an assurance statement carefully to judge the rigor of the
assurance and the extent on which it can be relied.
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OFFERING A COUNTER-ACCOUNT: THE EXTERNAL SOCIAL AUDITS
One of the advantages of democratic society is that, to a degree at least, it
permits alternative voices to be heard. Whether or not we subscribe to the view that
modern western society is dominated by the voice of the corporation, the plurality of
voices is probably a sign of a healthy democracy. The growth in stakeholder
consultation suggests the possibility of voices counter to that of the business
becoming better heard: or at least that the business voice may become more
harmonious with that of civil society. However, it is not obvious that these other
voices are, as yet, as ubiquitous on social and environmental accountability and
sustainability as perhaps they need to be (see, for example, Owen et al, 2001; Cooper
and Owen, 2007). It is this (perceived?) absence of a voice for civil society that has
led to what are broadly called the external social audits.
The term is used to embrace a bewildering array of accounts – anything, in
fact, that involves some body, group or person independent of the accountable
organisation producing a story (an account) about that organisation. One might think
of it as a range of mechanisms by which bodies dissatisfied with corporate voluntary
accountability seek to impose the accountability they require. The actual vehicles
used may be simply ad hoc and comprise such things as newspaper reports, citizen
protest reports, and campaigning documents from NGOs. Or these counter accounts
might equally comprise investigations by bodies as diverse as governmental
committees, statutory agencies or academics. The more interesting audits (at least in
the present context) tend to be the more systematic, in-depth and wide-ranging
investigations carried out over a period of time and sometimes on a continuing basis.
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The approach to these audits was probably pioneered by the consumer
movement in the USA but many of the standards were set in the 1970s by
organisations such as Social Audit Ltd (Medawar, 1976) and The Council on
Economic Priorities (CEP, 1977), as well as by early environmental pressure groups
and representatives of the labour movement (see, for example, Harte and Owen, 1987;
Gray et al, 1996; Geddes, 1991). External social audits are now ubiquitous and, for
example, are now a major tool of the NGOs (see, for example, Greenpeace, 1985;
Christian Aid, 2005). They are an essential part of the information sources for the
socially responsible investment movement (Global Witness, 2005) and a major source
of reputational risk for organisations (Deegan and Blomquist, 2006).
The diversity and range of potential external social audits is enormous (Gray
and Bebbington, 2001, p279; Gray et al, 1996, Ch 9; Geddes, 1991). We will very
briefly review three broad themes here: monitoring organisations; the one-off report;
and counter-accounting.
Monitoring organisations. Monitoring organisations are perhaps at their most
apparent in the consumer movement where the assessment of product quality, value
for money, safety and so forth can range from specialist journals and websites through
to accreditation bodies like Fairtrade or the Forest Stewardship Council. However,
such organisations are by no means restricted to consumer issues and every business
will be fully aware of many government, quasi-government and independent bodies
that monitor business performance in everything from environmental pollution,
through human rights abuses to health and safety matters. But perhaps one of the most
important developments – for accountability at least – has been the growth of
organisations which provide various indices and rankings and which have emerged,
largely, in response to the needs of socially responsible investment movement. These
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indices and rankings cover such matters as reputation (e.g. Most Admired rankings),
sustainability performance (e.g. the Dow Jones Sustainability (sic) Index) and social
responsibility performance (e.g. FTSE KLD Social Index). to measures of reputation
These sources have made enormous inroads as they are relatively simple and
relatively easily accessible. And herein lies the dangers of such indices (Fowler and
Hope, 2007) in that it is fairly unlikely that a simple measure can capture successfully
a complex and elusive quality (the experience with financial profit is a case in point)
and they are used too frequently by researchers who, delighted by the data, appear to
forget that these are (often very crude) proxies for the variable of interest.
Consequently incorrect inferences are far too often drawn, (see, for example, Gray
2006).
These monitoring processes have societal value in that they are one of the
ways in which a balancing view is offered to counter the view which business might
prefer to communicate (Medawar, 1976; Stephenson, 1973). The processes have the
intention of keeping the firm honest. (And, of course, we should not forget that if
businesses were capable of complete and honest self-reporting, such activities as these
might well be unnecessary). However, and it is a very important caveat, any sensible
citizen (and that hopefully includes researchers) will check the provenance and focus
of any monitoring: if it is a market-based index or monitoring and evaluation process
directed towards business, then one should always exercise a healthy scepticism as to
its reliability as an independent mechanism of accountability.
Providing Reports onlyAfter a Crisis. Whilst monitoring is part of normal
business practice, the possibility of providing a report only once can always challenge
a business’ strategy, reputation, and perception. If a business has a problem of which
it is unaware (poor management) or is seeking to hide (poor judgement) then
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providing a report only once becomes a distinct possibility. Corporations such as
Shell, BP, Nike, Gap, Nestle, Coca Cola, WalMart can all attest to this experience3.
The reports vary massively in terms of their depth and trustworthiness but, in their
appeal to civil society, they speak loudly of the accountability of un-accountable
organisations.
Counter-accounting. The final, and perhaps most diverse, category we touch
upon here is that of counter-accounting: in essence accounts that offer a directly
different and challenging story from that offered by the business itself. The process of
counter-accounting is undertaken by individuals and organisations (academics or
NGOs for example) who are quite independent of the accountable organisation. They
produce `accounts’ from a wide variety of sources of information including company
or industry watchdog data and other publicly available sources (the internet,
journalism and disaffected stakeholders would be amongst the most common) and
then (on occasions) combine this with the company’s own sustainability information.
The result provides a different, contrasting and possibly more comprehensive or
balanced view of the business’ activities. We see this in Adams (2004) where she
offers counter statements to many of the claims made by her case study company. . A
similar strategy is suggested by Gallhofer et al, (2006) with the Internet offering
possibilities for emancipatory accounts. Gibson et al (2001) offer a slightly different
approach suggesting the construction of two accounts: (a) the `silent account` using
only the corporation’s own information; and (b) the `shadow account` using public
information to counter the claims in the silent account. This approach seeks a
systematic exposure of the issues of bias and unreliability in reporting4.
3 Examples of are available at:
http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~csearweb/aptopractice/ext-aud-examples.html
4 This is also available on the CSEAR website at
http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~csearweb/aptopractice/silentacc.html
26 Gray and Herremans revised-1c.doc 05/06/2019 20
All of these approaches have – at least superficially - the common goal of
improving accountability and allowing other voices to speak alongside the views that
the businesses wish to present to the state and civil society. And in many cases it is
the non-financial stakeholders who have driven this external social audit agenda.
However, there is an irony in that the most established of the external social audits
have become institutionalised as a service to support financial participants. Whether it
be the monitoring agencies like Ethical Investment Research Services (EIRIS),
Environmental Finance and Pension Investment Research Consultants (PIRC), the
indices such as Dow Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI), and FTSE 4Good of the UK
or possibly even the Global Compact itself, all support the burgeoning socially
responsible investment movement. In doing so they seek (whether successfully or not
is a moot point) to gain convergence between the societal and the managerial
preferences for accountability around social, environmental and sustainability issues,
(Owen, 1990).
THE WAY FORWARD
Society has experienced a sea-change as it has slowly woken up to the environmental
(and social) catastrophes that its current ways of organisation seem to be creating – or
at least exacerbating. Not surprisingly, business has similarly experienced major
changes in its relationships with the environment, communities and stakeholders. The
development of the voluntary stand-alone report, the stimulus of the GRI and
emergence of monitoring and the external social audits are all part of that change.
There are two major imponderables lying at the heart of our discussion here.
The first is the question of whether or not organisations should be accountable? And if
so how and to whom? Corporate accountability to its financial participants has been
26 Gray and Herremans revised-1c.doc 05/06/2019 21
long accepted: the acceptance of the principle of accountability to non-financial
stakeholders appears now to be more widespread. It is the practice of that
accountability that is interpreted differently by corporations and their stakeholders, in
some instances, and therefore results in considerable variance in quality and quantity
of reporting.. Researchers are needed to urgently explore why there is difference
between what society need and what the organisation can accommodate and how this
gap may be closed through a greater communication and understanding. A slow and
gradual path towards full social and environmental accountability – probably through
complete Triple Bottom Line accounts (Spence and Gray, 2008) - is a tantalising and
exciting prospect – not least because it just might bring organisations’ conceptions of
responsibility and sustainability more into line with those needed by society.
However, the introduction of sustainability changes everything: the evidence
is pretty unequivocal that long slow paths are not an option (Ehrenfeld, [Chapter 35],
this volume). Pretty radical change is needed – and soon. At the heart of our
discussion, then, lies the second imponderable: where do businesses sit on the
sustainability issue? Many businesses and business-related organisations claim,
directly or by implication, to be sustainable or, at least, to be on the path towards
sustainable development (Milne et al., 2006). The growth of sustainability reports
might suggest that this view is substantiated - but these reports offer no obvious
evidence that any business is contributing to (as opposed to detracting from) a
sustainable world as understood by Brundtland. This failure looks like a major
limitation of sustainability reports. If the financial markets were unable to assess the
financial performance of a corporation from its financial statements, this would be
entirely unacceptable. Why might it be acceptable with sustainability reports? Only
when most major organisationsare required to produce complete, competent and
26 Gray and Herremans revised-1c.doc 05/06/2019 22
complex statements about their social, environmental, and sustainability performance,
will society be in a position to judge the extent to which (if at all) organisations are
performing to the highest standards of social and environmental stewardship and are
being truthful with their claims to probity and propriety.
The role of the researcher is critical: not least because so much research seems
content to ignore the wider data, ignore the wider context and accept a business-as-
usual scenario as beyond consideration (Milne et al, 2009). What this chapter has tried
to show is that there is an infinitude of very important questions needing urgent
answers about the whole relationship between business, financial markets, the natural
environmental, society and sustainability. Little extant research has addressed these
relationships seriously and prefer, so it would seem, to unquestionably accept poor
and misleading proxies in the pursuit of more and more refined answers to less and
less interesting questions. If, as the data suggest, we should express some
equivocation about the way in which business and business organisations articulate
the business-society-environment relationship, the most important task for any
researcher is to investigate whether these crucial claims are true. If they are not,
society and the planet are in a very dangerous place indeed.
26 Gray and Herremans revised-1c.doc 05/06/2019 23
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TABLE 1: TRENDS IN REPORTING BY LARGE COMPANIES
(% of the largest 100 companies producing reports in selected countries)
1996
1999
2002
2005
2008
5
Australia
5
15
14
23
37
Brazil
-
-
-
-
56
Canada
-
-
19
41
60
Czech Republic
-
-
-
-
14
Denmark
8
29
20
22
22
Finland
7
15
32
31
41
France
4
4
21
40
47
Germany
28
38
32
36
n/a
Hungary
-
-
-
-
25
Italy
-
2
12
31
59
Japan
-
21
72
80
88
Mexico
-
-
-
-
17
Netherlands
20
25
26
29
60
Norway
26
31
30
15
25
Portugal
-
-
-
-
49
Romania
-
-
-
-
23
South Africa
-
-
-
18
26
South Korea
-
-
-
-
42
Spain
-
-
-
25
59
Sweden
26
34
26
20
59
Switzerland
-
-
-
-
28
United Kingdom
27
32
49
71
84
United States
44
30
36
32
73
Global 250 companies % (n)
-
35(88)
45(112)
52(129)
79(198)
KPMG Country average % (n)
17(220)
24(267)
23(440)
33(525)
45(990)
Adapted from KPMG (1997, 1999, 2002, 2005, 2008)
5 The numbers shown in the table exclude those “sustainability” reports which were integrated
with the corporate annual report itself and which, in 2008, KPMG began to capture separately.
This understates the reporting by between 1 and 5% in most cases. However a few countries
have a significant presence on the annual report. These include Brazil (22%), France (12%),
Norway (12%), South Africa (19%) and Switzerland (21%).
26 Gray and Herremans revised-1c.doc 05/06/2019 30
TABLE 2: ORGANISATIONS REPORTING BASED UPON THE
GLOBAL REPORTING INITIATIVE (Numbers reporting)
1999
2002
2005
2008
Australia
7
17
62
Brazil
6
10
71
Canada
6
14
38
Czech Republic
1
1
Denmark
4
2
7
Finland
1
12
14
France
3
12
37
Germany
5
18
39
Hungary
3
4
9
Italy
3
12
40
Japan
1
17
22
61
Mexico
1
10
Netherlands
5
26
39
Norway
5
9
Portugal
1
2
19
Romania
0
0
South Africa
1
10
22
51
South Korea
8
46
Spain
8
62
131
Sweden
2
2
9
23
Switzerland
1
11
29
United Kingdom
1
14
24
46
United States
4
26
37
110
OTHER
18
44
802
9
140
305
1100
Derived from Global Reporting Initiative website Reports List. sampled 17th
February 2010
The countries listed were selected by the authors simply to make Table 2
comparable with the KPMG figures in Table 1.
26 Gray and Herremans revised-1c.doc 05/06/2019 31
FIGURE 1: Some Suggestive Statements about Sustainability and CSR Reporting
Now that some of the world’s largest companies have been able to quantify the business case
for corporate responsibility and reporting,…… corporate responsibility reporting is building
value for companies in many ways (KPMG, 2008, p4 + p10)
Two thirds of the world’s leading public companies now report formally on sustainability……. (o)f
the 79 organisations that use the term ‘sustainability’ in their CR reporting, only two define what
they mean by it in the first instance (SPADA, 2008, p9 + p3)
“Being sustainable is now mandatory for any 21st Century business” (emphasis in original)
Business and sustainable development (base) conference London 16-17 March 2010
The Coca Cola Sustainability Report 2008/2009 mentions sustaining or sustainable 86 times but
never defines it/links it to planet or justice. “We are assessing everything to increase
productivity, minimize waste and maximize resources—a clear example of where sustainability
goals and business objectives align. (p2) LIVE POSITIVELY™ is our commitment to making a
positive difference in the world. Through redesigning the way we work and live, we consider
sustainability as part of everything we do. As we act with an eye toward future generations, we
will focus on driving business growth and creating a more sustainable world. (p6)
The Puma Sustainability Report 2007/2008 mentions sustainability 146 times; it is one of the
world’s best reports and makes several attempts to link indirectly to sustainability via other
organisations (SAM, Global Compact, DJSI, which themselves do not explain links to
sustainability): This path that PUMA has paved over the past ten years is a testament to the fact
that we do not simply talk about sustainable development, we take action. (p5) Sustainability is
a given rather than a trend … (p52)
