Abstract
Today, the issue of corporate sustainability is noted both in academic literature and in the business environment, and there are many companies and organizations that want to make their operations sustainable and communicate different dimensions of sustainability in their business to stakeholders through sustainability reporting. This paper seeks to provide a framework for corporate sustainability reporting by reviewing existing literature on sustainability reporting, taking into account the expertise of domestic experts, to provide a roadmap for developing corporate sustainability reports in Iran. The statistical population of this study includes professionals and academics, including university teachers and post- graduate students in business majors. Our sample was determined via judgment sampling and data was obtained through 119 designed questionnaires. The results of this research is summarized in a Corporate Sustainability Reporting Framework for Iran, which is developed based on Seven research questions related to preparers of sustainability reports; determinants of sustainability reporting; the content of sustainability reports; corporate governance mechanisms necessary for sustainability reporting; challenges and risks with regard to sustainability reporting; benefits of sustainability reports; and assurance of sustainability reports.
Highlights
Corporate sustainability is meeting the desires of direct and indirect stakeholders of the company without compromising on the capability to meet the future stakeholders’ needs [1]
Since the company's profitability and financial capability lead to firms' flexibility to bear the costs of sustainability reporting, profitability and financial capability is considered as the second determinant for the sustainability reporting, which is in line with the studies of the research [16,17,18]
Sustainability reports should be considered in the context of some governance mechanisms such as legal requirements, national and international standards, management attitude, appropriate information system infrastructure, and the existence of sustainable performance strategies, as well as application of corporate governance principles
Summary
Corporate sustainability is meeting the desires of direct and indirect stakeholders of the company without compromising on the capability to meet the future stakeholders’ needs [1]. Corporate sustainability is a process of focusing on company achievements in all five dimensions of sustainable performance (economic, social, managerial, ethical, and environmental) [2]. A number of sustainability theories have been developed in examining the role of corporations in society and their interactions with their stakeholders, including agency, stakeholder, signaling, institutional, legitimacy, and stewardship theories. The aforementioned theories try to explain the integration among several dimensions of sustainability performance, interactions between them, the possible pressures and constraints imposed by them on the key business objective of creating value for its shareholder [2]. Sustainability reporting based on stakeholder and legitimacy theories address a process for protecting the interests of all stakeholders, focusing on achieving long-term financial and non-financial performance for all owners
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