Enhancing the value of corporate sustainability: An approach for aligning multiple SDGs guides on reporting

Abstract

In the past two decades, there has been ongoing development of corporate sustainability reporting frameworks to increase awareness of sustainability-related issues from various company stakeholders. At the same time, major reporting frameworks dealing with sustainability issues increasingly publish guides to support corporations' Sustainability Development Goals (SDGs) commitments. For corporations, it is challenging to use these guides to obtain the highest benefits for fulfilling corporate sustainability targets and provide valuable reporting on these for its stakeholders. This paper aims to provide a structural alignment approach and a robust alignment methodology that corporations can repeatedly use to harmonize the SDGs guides of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) and the International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC) to satisfy their evolving SDGs reporting challenges. The corporate sustainability assessment and reporting performance of four telecommunication companies on their SDGs commitment and their SDGs reporting challenges are examined to support them with tailor-made guidance established by aligning various SDGs guides of GRI and IIRC. The alignment process is carried out by utilizing the alignment framework and the alignment approach established by the paper. By applying the proposed alignment approach and alignment framework, the paper concludes that corporations can increase their SDGs reporting performance by satisfying their SDGs challenges with the deliverables of the SDGs guides. It adds value to strategic corporate sustainability literature by analyzing the relationship among companies’ SDGs approaches in the same sector and supporting the various SDGs guides of GRI and IIRC by applying the alignment approach established in this paper.