Standard Setting Organizations Research Articles

A Conceptual Study on Implications of Green Finance in India

Abstract: The financial industry can help reduce the risk of climate change and lessen the effects of unfavourable climate occurrences, which is a significant contribution to the battle against climate change. Maintaining financial stability and spreading climate-related risks can be aided by long-term institutional investors. Other financial tools, such as green stock indexes, green bonds, and voluntary de-carbonization programmes, can assist reallocate investment to "green" industries. Hedging products, such as catastrophe bonds and indexed insurance, help insure against increasing natural disaster risk. For the foreseeable future, climate change is expected to remain the central political and economic issue of this century. Globally, governments, corporations, investors, and private citizens are starting to act on climate change, particularly with regard to decarbonisation strategies. It would take exceptional amounts of new capital investment—green financing, in particular—to support the kinds of initiatives that reduce greenhouse gas emissions and help businesses adjust to the effects of climate change in order to transition to a low-carbon or green economy. For this reason, it's critical to comprehend what green finance is and why it matters. In order to handle the complex risks that climate change poses, central banks and other regulators are modifying their frameworks and procedures from an oversight standpoint. Among the strategies for enhancing climate risk disclosure and categorization requirements are those that will assist investors and financial institutions in evaluating their exposure to climate risk, as well as regulators in assessing systemic hazards. Supporting the development of climate-related stress tests and broader promotion of green finance, the IMF is collaborating with standard-setting organisations such as the Network of Central Banks and Supervisors for Greening the Financial System. The researcher concludes that it is important to pursue this investigation in light of the aforementioned facts

Three pathways for standardisation and ethical disclosure by default under the European Union Artificial Intelligence Act

Under its proposed Artificial Intelligence Act (‘AIA’), the European Union seeks to develop harmonised standards involving abstract normative concepts such transparency, fairness, and accountability. Applying such concepts inevitably requires answering hard normative questions. Considering this challenge, we argue that there are three possible pathways for future standardisation under the AIA. First, European standard-setting organisations (‘SSOs’) could answer hard normative questions themselves. This approach would raise concerns about its democratic legitimacy. Standardisation is a technical discourse and tends to exclude non-expert stakeholders and the public at large. Second, instead of passing their own normative judgments, SSOs could track the normative consensus they find available. By analysing the standard-setting history of one major SSO, we show that such consensus tracking has historically been its pathway of choice. If standardisation under the AIA took the same route, we demonstrate how this would lead to a false sense of safety as the process is not infallible. Consensus tracking would furthermore push the need to solve unavoidable normative problems down the line. Instead of regulators, AI developers and/or users could define what, for example, fairness requires. By the institutional design of its AIA, the European Commission would have essentially kicked the ‘AI Ethics’ can down the road. We thus suggest a third pathway which aims to avoid the pitfalls of the previous two: SSOs should create standards which require “ethical disclosure by default.” These standards will specify minimum technical testing, documentation, and public reporting requirements to shift ethical decision-making to local stakeholders and limit provider discretion in answering hard normative questions in the development of AI products and services. Our proposed pathway is about putting the right information in the hands of the people with the legitimacy to make complex normative decisions at a local, context-sensitive level.

Collaboration and social capital in meta-organisations: bonding or bridging?

ABSTRACT How do firms collaborate to achieve their strategic goals within inter-organisational settings? Inter-firm collaboration is a double-edge sword – it helps firms to obtain external resources, but it also increases risks of knowledge spillovers with competitors. Normally, spillover risks are reduced through formal contracting. However, meta-organisations, like standard-setting organisations, lack formal contracts, meaning that firms often rely on social capital to offset transaction costs and opportunism. This paper applies theories of social capital to explain inter-firm collaboration within the meta-organisational environment of 3GPP (Third Generational Partnership Project) – the primary global mobile telecommunications standard-setting organisation. It utilises a stochastic actor-based model and a comprehensive collaboration dataset from the 3G to 4G eras to examine the mechanism of collaboration. We find that firms are more likely to choose partner firms based on the ‘bonding’ view of social capital, rather than the ‘bridging’ view. The paper advances research on collaboration mechanism within meta-organisation, while also contributing to social capital theory in emphasising the importance of the bonding view of social capital under conditions when no formal contracts are available.

The effect of natural products used as pesticides on the soil microbiota: OECD 216 nitrogen transformation test fails to identify effects that were detected via q-PCR microbial abundance measurement.

Natural products present an environmentally attractive alternative to synthetic pesticides which have been implicated in the off-target effect. Currently, the assessment of pesticide toxicity on soil microorganisms relies on the OECD 216 N transformation assay (OECD stands for the Organisation Economic Co-operation and Development, which is a key international standard-setting organisation). We tested the hypotheses that (i) the OECD 216 assay fails to identify unacceptable effects of pesticides on soil microbiota compared to more advanced molecular and standardized tests, and (ii) the natural products tested (dihydrochalcone, isoflavone, aliphatic phenol, and spinosad) are less toxic to soil microbiota compared to a synthetic pesticide compound (3,5-dichloraniline). We determined the following in three different soils: (i) ammonium (NH4 +) and nitrate (NO3 -) soil concentrations, as dictated by the OECD 216 test, and (ii) the abundance of phylogenetically (bacteria and fungi) and functionally distinct microbial groups [ammonia-oxidizing archaea (AOA) and bacteria (AOB)] using quantitative polymerase chain reaction (q-PCR). All pesticides tested exhibited limited persistence, with spinosad demonstrating the highest persistence. None of the pesticides tested showed clear dose-dependent effects on NH4 + and NO3 - levels and the observed effects were <25% of the control, suggesting no unacceptable impacts on soil microorganisms. In contrast, q-PCR measurements revealed (i) distinct negative effects on the abundance of total bacteria and fungi, which were though limited to one of the studied soils, and (ii) a significant reduction in the abundance of both AOA and AOB across soils. This reduction was attributed to both natural products and 3,5-dichloraniline. Our findings strongly advocate for a revision of the current regulatory framework regarding the toxicity of pesticides to soil microbiota, which should integrate advanced and well-standardized tools. © 2024 The Authors. Pest Management Science published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Society of Chemical Industry.

Innovation incentives in technical standards

I study the incentives to develop complementary technologies and include them in a technical standard. I find that the standardization process may lead to insufficient or excessive innovation. Patent pools increase innovation incentives, while price caps may increase or decrease them. Although both policies increase user surplus and welfare, price caps dominate (are dominated by) patent pools if the incremental value of technologies is small (large). Preventing the coordination of price caps guarantees that the socially-optimal policy is implemented in equilibrium. However, from innovators' perspective, patent pools are more profitable than price caps. This finding helps explain why patent pools are more prevalent than price caps, even though price caps may imply higher welfare. Cooperative R&D agreements increase innovation and welfare when technologies are highly complementary. The paper's results contribute to the discussion of the effects of recent policy changes in the VITA and IEEE standard-setting organizations.

Investigating Patent Value and Litigation Probability of Global Technology Standards

Standard-essential patent (SEP) is a patent that claims an invention that must be used to comply with a technical standard. The issues of patent infringement are often at the forefront of the strategy and planning in patent litigation. Determining an appropriate methodology for valuing a patented invention is a complex and nuanced undertaking. This is particularly true for patent cases where the accused product or service includes many overlapping features and technologies. Patent information can be used in important issues of global technological standardization in order to evaluate the competitive potential of the SEP. This article makes two major contributions: First, it compares the patent value of SEPs with that of non-SEPs. According to the results, SEPs do have higher value, which indicates the effectiveness of the SEP system supported by standard setting organizations. Second, based on comprehensive observations of litigated SEPs, a model for predicting the probability of litigation is established and the litigation probability distribution of SEPs is plotted.

Sustainability Reporting and Financial Performance of Oil and Gas Companies Listed in Nigeria

“Financial performance (FP) is a subjective measure of how well a firm can use assets from its primary mode of business and generate revenues. The term is also used as a general measure of a firm’s overall financial health over a given period.” A company’s financial performance refers to its health as a whole and the money it makes from its operations. Allocating resources effectively to meet objectives and boost profits is at the heart of this practice. The integrity of Nigeria’s oil and gas data relies on it completely. The sustainability of oil and gas in Nigeria is becoming questionable due to environmental factors that were not properly accounted for, and this prompted the researcher of this study to zero in on the effect of corporate social responsibility on the bottom lines of Nigeria’s publicly traded oil and gas firms. This study used an ex-post facto method for its research, using data from secondary sources such as annual reports and the Nigerian stock market. Inadequate CSR reporting and a failure to adequately reflect the financial performance of listed oil and gas firms have been noted in numerous works of literature. Using panel data analysis, the research correlated CSR reporting with the profitability indicators return on assets (ROA), return on equity (ROE), and return on capital employed (ROCE) of publicly traded oil and gas firms. This study looks at 10 Nigerian oil and gas firms that are traded on public markets. A filter was used with a census sampling strategy. Firms that (1) were permitted to trade before January 1, 2010, or (2) are still listed as of December 31, 2020 are eligible for review. In addition, the organization must publicly disclose yearly reports pertinent to the time under investigation. As a result of not meeting these criteria, four of the original eight firms were eliminated. Secondary sources were consulted to get the data needed. EViews 10, a statistical programme, was used to analyze the data for this research. The regression analysis showed that CSR reporting increases ROA by a small but favourable amount. The return on equity, however, was shown to be positively correlated with environmental sustainability. Finally, a statistically insignificant positive correlation was found between social sustainability and return on investment (ROI). Therefore, this study concludes, based on the data provided, that sustainability reporting significantly affects the company’s financial performance for listed oil and gas businesses in Nigeria. Based on the findings of this study, oil and gas companies in Nigeria should make public disclosure of their sustainability efforts a top priority if they want to improve their bottom lines. Compliance in the industry as a whole can be improved if policymakers and standard-setting organizations work together to make it easier for industries to design and execute sector-specific reporting regulations.

Determination of FRAND royalty rates: an examination of prominent SEP cases

Abstract Technology standards are critical in creating a common interface, allowing interoperability between individual components, devices and networks. Technology standards often incorporate many essential patented inventions, which are referred to as standard-essential patents (SEPs). Owners of declared SEPs provide commitments to standard setting organizations (SSOs) that they will license their SEPs on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms to companies that practice the standards. However, it is sometimes disputed whether or not these royalty rates are FRAND; in these cases, the burden of determining a FRAND royalty falls to courts. It is important for parties involved in SEP litigation to be knowledgeable of the appropriate economic tools and models to address the various issues arising in these unique and challenging patent disputes. This article discusses how various approaches to patent valuation have been applied in prominent SEP cases over the last decade.

Co-Opetition and the Firm’s Information Environment

Some firms in the technology sector choose to cooperate with competitors (“co-opetition”) in standard setting organizations (SSOs). These SSOs create technology standards that facilitate rapid market penetration of new technologies such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and 4G. Active participation in the standard setting process requires the exchange of proprietary information with competitors. Although the goal of such information sharing is to further a technology or a product market, firms potentially receive an additional benefit from access to competitor and industry information. We examine whether contributing to SSO committees enhances a firm’s information set and allows managers to better predict future sales. We find that the centrality of a firm’s location within the network of SSO collaborators is positively related to the accuracy of the firm’s sales forecasts. This relation is stronger when firms exchange more information with direct competitors and with larger firms, when forecasting is more difficult ex ante, and when firms forecast over longer horizons. Our findings show that collaborating with competitors in the product market provides an important additional benefit of improving the manager’s information set. This paper was accepted by David Simchi-Levi, accounting. Funding: This work was supported by the Wharton School, Institut Européen d’Administration des Affaires, the Institut Européen d’Administration des Affaires-Wharton Alliance, and the Mack Institute for Innovation Management. Supplemental Material: The data and online appendix are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2021.03152 .

Derivative Risk Information Disclosure Effect on Financial Reporting Quality Evidence from Selected Listed Deposit Money Banks in Nigeria

This study investigates the impact of financial derivative risk information disclosure on the quality of financial reporting in a sample of Nigerian deposit money banks. Data from the annual financial reports of twelve Nigerian listed commercial banks were collected over a ten-year period, from 2012 to 2021. While derivative assets served as the proxy for the independent variable, Jones Discretionary Accrual was employed to measure reporting quality and cash flow to asset ratio was employed as control variable. The hypothesis was tested using Pooled Ordinary Least Square regression analysis technique whose result indicate that disclosure of financial derivative risk information leads to an increase in discretionary accrual value, thereby undermining the quality of financial reports. As a result of this finding, the study concludes that disclosing financial derivative risk information has a negative impact on the quality of financial reports issued by Nigerian deposit money banks. It therefore recommends that policymakers work with regulatory bodies and standard-setting organizations to establish standardized disclosure practices for derivative instruments among Nigerian deposit money banks.

Market reaction to mandatory sustainability disclosures: evidence from Singapore

PurposeThis study aims to investigate the equity market reaction to sustainability disclosure measures derived from firms' inaugural sustainability reports following the implementation of mandatory sustainability reporting in Singapore.Design/methodology/approachThis study explores the equity market reaction to first-time sustainability reports of mandatory adopters and compares the reactions between voluntary and mandatory adopters. To mitigate any imbalanced distribution effects, entropy balancing techniques are employed.FindingsThe author observes a significant equity market reaction when mandatory adopters adhere to a reporting framework and release sustainability reports as standalone documents. Additionally, the study indicates that government regulation amplifies the equity market reaction for companies that include a board statement within their sustainability reports and present them as standalone publications.Research limitations/implicationsThe lack of quantitative information disclosed in the first-time sustainability reports may restrict the generalizability of the findings.Practical implicationsThe findings provide valuable insights for organizations and managers to evaluate the market's response to sustainability disclosures and improve communication effectiveness with investors. Furthermore, the study has direct policy implications for global standard-setting organizations in sustainability reporting. The findings support the notion that investors value market-led and investor-focused sustainability disclosures.Originality/valueThe study contributes to the limited body of research that examines the capital market effects of mandatory sustainability disclosures. To the author’s knowledge, this is among a few studies to directly investigate the equity market reaction to mandatory sustainability disclosures at the firm level.

INTUITION IN AUDITOR'S PROFESSIONAL SKEPTICISM

This article discusses the use of intuition by auditors, exploring its relevance for fraud detection. Auditors are expected to exhibit professional skepticism, which includes a questioning mindset and critical evaluation of audit evidence, but there have been concerns about insufficient use in the practice. While intuition is considered a dangerous trait for auditors due to the risk of biased decisions, it is an essential driver of practice, particularly for risk decisions. Despite the initiatives of professional associations of accountants and auditors, governmental regulators, and international standardization organizations to enhance knowledge about auditors' professional skepticism, there is still a lack of practical guidance on the appropriate use and how to document it. Therefore, the research question is how intuition can be used in the audit process to enhance fraud detection. To address this question, the article provides a literature review of normative, practitioner, and academic production on the use of intuition by auditors as a cognitive approach. The article concludes that the academic literature is scarce, and the normative resistance to the concept by standard-setting organizations may be the cause. The tension between the necessity of sufficient and proper documentation and the exercise of professional skepticism creates a paradox for auditors. Practitioners' commissioned research on auditors' skepticism is essential to bridge the academic literature on intuition and the rule-making by professional and standard-setting organizations. The article proposes a research agenda for the categories: Incentives, Time, Mindset/Prompts, Environmental and Contextual Factors, Competence, and Traits, suggesting alternative research methods such as case studies of corruption and financial scandals. This contribution is essential for auditors, accounting professionals, regulators, and scholars interested in the audit process and enhancing auditors' professional skepticism.

Standardising policy in a nonstandard way: a public/private standardisation process in Norway

Abstract Standards developed by standard-setting organisations (SSOs) – sometimes labelled private rulemaking – are part of larger practices of governance in most societies yet are underinvestigated from a policy process perspective. Utilising and developing the multiple streams approach (MSA), this article investigates a policy process moving between government and the SSO Standards Norway (SN). The study finds standardisation by SSOs to be an ambiguous institutional arrangement. Strong institutional barriers in theory did not work as such in the case investigated. This article argues that the differentiation between responsibility for process (SN) and content (committee) makes the standardisation process vulnerable. The concept of “institutional deficit” is introduced to describe a potential mismatch between SSOs producing policy in a government-like institution, but where the SSOs are not capable of taking responsibility for policies in a government-like way. This article finds the adjusted MSA useful in this potentially least likely case.

Declared essential patents and average total R&D expenditures per patent family

The sharp increase in SEP declarations and declaring firms emphasizes the necessity for understanding firms’ innovation investment behavior in standardization. This paper empirically investigates whether declared standard-essential patents (SEPs) and the declaring firm’s business model (operationalized as a firm’s location in the value chain) are associated with a firm’s innovation investment behavior. To this end, we measure firms’ innovation investment behavior through average total research and development (R&D) expenditures per filed patent family for publicly listed firms from 1999 to 2018. Our sample mainly includes major SEP family declarants. We rely on a binary business model taxonomy differentiating upstream and downstream firms. Within that setting, total R&D expenditures rise with increasing fragmentation of declared SEP families, suggesting that firms adjust their R&D investments to declaration developments in standard-setting organizations (SSOs). We also show that upstream firms have significantly lower total R&D expenditures than downstream firms, which could indicate structural differences in their intellectual property (IP) and R&D management processes. Our results can help SSOs and regulators better understand firms’ innovation investment behavior.

Recommendations for metaverse governance based on technical standards

Technical standards in digital technology can now be utilised to gather numerous digital sub-universes into the metaverse. However, how to create and implement guidance for the metaverse based on technical standards remains unexplored. This study investigated the theoretical framework and policy implications for future technical standards-based metaverse governance (TS-MG). The methodology entailed reviewing the available metaverse governance literature to establish both theoretical and case analyses of practices based on the economics of standards and the theory of networks. This study found that TS-MG encompasses the formulation, security, and compatibility of technical standards. TS-MG should enable the first-mover advantage of standards formulation for standard-setting organisations. It also includes phased governance policies that balance the compatibility and security of standards in the initial, growth, and mature stages of the metaverse. This study highlights the necessity of cooperation among governments, standard-setting organisations, and enterprises to (1) accelerate the development of systemised standards and (2) promote the effective supply of metaverse standards.

Phenopacket-tools: Building and validating GA4GH Phenopackets.

The Global Alliance for Genomics and Health (GA4GH) is a standards-setting organization that is developing a suite of coordinated standards for genomics. The GA4GH Phenopacket Schema is a standard for sharing disease and phenotype information that characterizes an individual person or biosample. The Phenopacket Schema is flexible and can represent clinical data for any kind of human disease including rare disease, complex disease, and cancer. It also allows consortia or databases to apply additional constraints to ensure uniform data collection for specific goals. We present phenopacket-tools, an open-source Java library and command-line application for construction, conversion, and validation of phenopackets. Phenopacket-tools simplifies construction of phenopackets by providing concise builders, programmatic shortcuts, and predefined building blocks (ontology classes) for concepts such as anatomical organs, age of onset, biospecimen type, and clinical modifiers. Phenopacket-tools can be used to validate the syntax and semantics of phenopackets as well as to assess adherence to additional user-defined requirements. The documentation includes examples showing how to use the Java library and the command-line tool to create and validate phenopackets. We demonstrate how to create, convert, and validate phenopackets using the library or the command-line application. Source code, API documentation, comprehensive user guide and a tutorial can be found at https://github.com/phenopackets/phenopacket-tools. The library can be installed from the public Maven Central artifact repository and the application is available as a standalone archive. The phenopacket-tools library helps developers implement and standardize the collection and exchange of phenotypic and other clinical data for use in phenotype-driven genomic diagnostics, translational research, and precision medicine applications.

The definers and standard setters of security: mapping the security field’s regulators through European football

ABSTRACT By drawing upon and attaching a new layer to the “security field” concept, this article examines and conceptualizes European security practices and challenges through the lens of European football. At a critical juncture for security in both Europe and football, this article questions (i) how the supranational regulation informing European football’s security field has evolved since 1985 and (ii) how exactly the security field’s regulators – the Council of Europe, Council of the EU, and UEFA – set the standards for the remainder of the security field. Relatedly, it asks what this tells us about the power to define security. Drawing upon theoretical perspectives located in International Political Sociology, the sociology of leisure and sport, and publicly available documents and conventions, this conceptual article contributes to our understanding of security in Europe. It argues, first, that the security field in European football is indicative of wider security transformations. Second, that the security field’s regulators configure and dictate the wider field and possess the power to standardize security and the prioritization of threats. This remains important because, to fully understand and analytically capture the security field in European football, one must conceptually account for its standard setting organizations.

Chronicles of Mechanical Engineering in the United States ed. by Thomas H. Fehring and Terry S. Reynolds

Reviewed by: Chronicles of Mechanical Engineering in the United States ed. by Thomas H. Fehring and Terry S. Reynolds Peter Liebhold (bio) Chronicles of Mechanical Engineering in the United States Edited by Thomas H. Fehring and Terry S. Reynolds. New York: American Society of Mechanical Engineers, 2021. Pp. xvi + 405. A fiftieth anniversary is a milestone of longevity that many organizations never achieve. It takes a lot to maintain leadership continuity, overcome economic challenges, and keep membership involved for half of a century. To mark the golden anniversary of the History and Heritage Committee of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), the society commissioned Chronicles of Mechanical Engineering in the United States. This book is a collection of over seventy vignettes, mostly biographical and thematic with a few landmark stories. In a surprising organizational decision, 90 percent of the entries—many written by Fritz Hirschfeld between 1976 and 1980—are reprints from the last fifty years of the ASME journal Mechanical Engineering. The book editors, Thomas Fehring and Terry Reynolds, contribute short chapter heads. Organized into eight topical chapters, Fehring and Reynolds do not argue a grand theory of engineering through their selection of articles. The simple goal of this book is to celebrate the achievements of engineers and the ASME. Other historians have followed a different approach: Bruce Sinclair's Centennial History of ASME explored the role of engineers and professional societies through the tensions of professionalizing the group. Eugene Ferguson's Engineering and the Mind's Eye railed against engineering's dependency on academic mathematical modeling and suggested the need for practical experience. Henry Petroski argued in Success through Failure that engineering success leads to overconfidence and catastrophe and that humility and insight stem from disaster. The intended audience for Chronicles of Mechanical Engineering is a bit mysterious. Fehring and Reynolds explain the articles lack academic rigor (footnotes, bibliography, etc.) and are not for historians. They suggest the collection of stories presents an important learning opportunity for the general public. But what if the sum is less than the parts? The real audience here is ASME members reifying the importance of their organization. Most historians agree that technology played a critical role (both positive and negative) in the development of the United States. As the nation matured and society transitioned from agrarian to industrial, engineers acted as innovators and agents for change. In this crucible of transformation, engineers were at the center, developing machines, engines, and the infrastructure of modern society. A book that broadly tells the history of engineering is a great opportunity for presenting epiphany moments, helping readers learn from the past and understand the complexity of life moving forward. [End Page 649] A challenge for the book is whether old versions of history are still useful. Some of the entries may be old but are interesting and resonate today. Frank Wicks's "First Flights" uses the birth of powered flight to provide insight into the failure of a government-supported academic engineer (Samuel Langley) and the success of untrained independent tinkerers (Frank and Wilbur Wright). Charles Beardsley's retrospective on the Hydrolevel case is one of the few essays that are not celebratory. Instead, he details how the ASME, a voluntary standards-setting organization, got into serious antitrust troubles through conflicts of interest. Reprinting classics can be challenging, and not all the entries weather well. Written for audiences of the day, most do not address questions of race, class, or gender. In fact, one of the most surprising problems in this book is diversity. ASME should be painfully aware of STEM stereotypes and the need to bring women and people of color into their organization. This book could have reinvented the ASME through a revisionist history that highlights both old heroes and the contributions of people overlooked in the past. Today, ASME membership is 53 percent white, 16 percent Latino, 14 percent Asian, and about 82 percent male. But the book is mostly a "great man" history highlighting only two women (Lilian Gilbreth and Emily Roebling) and no people of color. The editors acknowledge that "the articles are generally not critical and that they focus primarily on engineering success rather than failure." The concept...

Policy orientations and technology choices in standards wars

Standard-setting organizations (SSOs) exhibit a variety of policy orientations toward the conflicting interests of technology developers and adopters. In this paper, we analyze a model that incorporates the technology choices of SSOs in standards wars and royalty determinations made by the developers of essential technologies. We show that both policy orientations toward developers relative to adopters and coordinated standard setting by SSOs that issue competing standards may result in a more-than-optimal number of essential technologies. Furthermore, we examine how SSOs’ technology choices may be affected by both network effects in standard adoption and coalition formation among developers.

Sustainability Reporting: Is Convergence Possible?

In this essay, we discuss the factors influencing the likelihood of convergence in corporate sustainability reporting. We identify several factors that negatively influence the probability of convergence in the short term. The first factor is the heterogeneity of concepts and definitions surrounding sustainability (e.g. ESG, CSR). This heterogeneity of definitions is pervasive at three levels: (1) across organizations claiming legitimacy in sustainability reporting standard-setting, (2) within standard-setting organizations over time, and (3) across firms reporting about their activities. A second factor is the large number of organizations claiming legitimacy in sustainability reporting. A third factor is related to a diversity of reporting requirements among three influential international standard setters (i.e. EFRAG, ISSB, SEC), leading to various corporate reporting choices. A fourth factor is the diversity in the objectives of standard-setting organizations. Overall, we believe that due to these sources of diversity, the probability of convergence in sustainability reporting appears limited, at least in the short term, although we identify progress in carbon emissions reporting.