Page 171 - Sustainability Communication Interdisciplinary Perspectives and Theoritical Foundations

154 C. Herzig and S. Schaltegger

Financial reporting originated in the nineteenth century and focuses on monetary
principles and measures (‘economic effectiveness’ in Fig. 14.1). In the 1970s as
income levels rose, the focus of society and politics shifted to objectives like quality
of life, while at the same time the negative effects of quantitative economic growth
and a Tayloristic organisation of production processes were seen critically in most
parts of Europe. This led to a number of companies starting to publish their social
goals, activities and impacts in specific social reports. This type of corporate report-
ing is often considered to be the first stage of non- or extra-financial reporting,
although it has been preceded by the disclosure of employee and community issues
within annual reports for many decades (Guthrie and Parker 1989). The essential
concern of the reporting of social balances and the publication of social reports was
to inform stakeholders about the company’s activities, products and services, and
related positive and negative social impacts (socio-effectiveness). However by the
end of the 1970s, social reports had become rare. Among the reasons for the decline
were an inadequate target group orientation; the mismatch between the information
interests of most stakeholders and social reports that were often scientifically
designed and remote from the reality of most people’s lives; the instrumentalisation
of social reporting as a public relations tool, which reduced its credibility; the insuf-
ficient integration of social and financial reporting; and the positive economic and
political development of Europe, with job movements to the services sector and
improved working conditions (Dierkes and Antal 1985; Hemmer 1996).
About a decade later, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, environmental reporting
emerged and to a large extent superseded early social reporting activities. One of the
main aims of environmental reporting is to provide information on ecological effec-
tiveness or, in other words, the absolute level of corporate environmental impacts such
as air and water emissions, types and amounts of wastes, etc. Environmental reporting
can be seen as a response to hazardous incidents and environmental disasters such as
Schweizerhalle (Switzerland), Icmea Ltd. (Italy) and Hoechst AG (Germany) in the
1990s. In consequence, companies were perceived to be the major creators and causes
of environmental problems. They started – partly forced by new laws (compulsory
reporting), partly voluntarily – to provide information about environmentally relevant
corporate activities to a variety of stakeholders. Until the end of the millennium, the
number of environmental reports and the attention they received in the media and
society increased significantly, and their average quality improved – from being pri-
marily green glossaries and one-off reports in the beginning to more comprehensive
environmental reports published on a regular basis. An example for a voluntary
approach to environmental reporting is the European Union Eco-Management and
Audit Scheme (EMAS). It recognises companies that manage and improve their envi-
ronmental performance and document their respective achievements using public
environmental statements, a specific form of an environmental report.
In addition and sometimes exceeding these rather one-dimensionally oriented
communication activities, reporting started to focus on two-dimensional links between
the economic and the environmental dimensions (eco-efficiency) or – more rarely – the
link between the economic and the social dimensions (socio-efficiency). Since the mid-
1990s, companies have increasingly disclosed information about the interrelationship