Capturing the Stakeholders’ View in Sustainability Reporting: A Novel Approach

Nicola Bellantuono,Pierpaolo Pontrandolfo,Barbara Scozzi

doi:10.3390/su8040379

Nicola Bellantuono, Pierpaolo Pontrandolfo + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/su8040379

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Journal: Sustainability	Publication Date: Apr 16, 2016
Citations: 98	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: Polytechnic University of Bari

Abstract

Sustainability reporting is the process by which companies describe how they deal with their own economic, environmental, and social impacts, thus making stakeholders able to recognize the value of sustainable practices. As stressed in the Global Reporting Initiative guidelines, which act as a de facto standard for sustainability reporting, sustainable reports should take into account the stakeholders’ view. In particular, engaging stakeholders is essential to carry out the materiality analysis, by which organizations can identify their own more relevant sustainability aspects. Yet, on the one hand, the existing guidelines do not provide specific indications on how to get stakeholders actually engaged; on the other hand, research on quantitative techniques to support stakeholder engagement in materiality analysis is scarce. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is the development of a quantitative structured approach based on multi-attribute group decision-making techniques to effectively and reliably support stakeholder engagement during materiality analysis in sustainability reporting. As it more strictly guides the reporting process, the proposed approach at the same time simplifies materiality analysis and makes it more reliable. Though any company can adopt the approach, small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are expected to particularly benefit from it, due to the quite limited implementation effort that is required. With this respect, the approach has been validated on a sample of Italian SMEs belonging to different sectors.

Highlights

The last few decades have seen a growing debate on the role of business in society and the need for companies to take sustainability issues into account (e.g., [1,2])
Sustainability reporting is the process by which companies describe how they deal with their own economic, environmental, and social impacts, making stakeholders able to recognize the value of sustainable practices
The purpose of this paper is the development of a quantitative structured approach based on multi-attribute group decision-making techniques to effectively and reliably support stakeholder engagement during materiality analysis in sustainability reporting

Summary

Introduction

The last few decades have seen a growing debate on the role of business in society and the need for companies to take sustainability issues into account (e.g., [1,2]). In 2011, the European Union (EU) [3] defined corporate social responsibility as “the responsibility of enterprises for their impacts on society” With this respect, EU underlines the need for companies to implement a “close collaboration with their stakeholders”. The purpose of this paper is the development of a structured quantitative approach to support organizations in the assessment of the stakeholders’ view during the materiality analysis, i.e. the identification of the sustainability aspects most relevant for the organization itself and its stakeholders. Final remarks and further research avenues are reported in the Conclusions section

Stakeholder Engagement

Sustainability Reporting

Stakeholder Engagement in Materiality Analysis

An Approach to Model the Stakeholders’ View

Application

Findings

Conclusions