Evaluating the Quality of Web Based Sustainability Reports: A Multi-method Framework

Abstract

Sustainability reports bear the potential to improve a company's image and to create competitive advantages, for they influence consumers' buying decisions and the investment decisions of potential shareholders. There are multiple standards and guidelines on sustainability reporting, which, however, mainly relate to the contents of the reports. We argue that due to the stakeholder-focused nature of sustainability reports, additional quality criteria exceeding the mere content need to be considered to improve the stakeholders' acceptance. Since these criteria are stakeholder-specific, they need to be defined and evaluated with direct involvement of the stakeholders. Thus, we propose a multi-method framework for the quality evaluation of web based sustainability reports. In order to evaluate our framework and to gain first insights into stakeholder-focused quality and acceptance criteria, we applied our framework within a preliminary study. First experiences and results are presented and implications for theory and practice are derived.