Page 173 - Sustainability Communication Interdisciplinary Perspectives and Theoritical Foundations

156 C. Herzig and S. Schaltegger

Each of these deals with specific aspects of corporate sustainability and addresses
different stakeholder groups.
• Stand-alone sustainability reports: In this reporting strategy, companies publish
stand-alone sustainability reports that provide information about the company’s
ecological, social and economic sustainability activities and performance, often
following the format of earlier environmental reports and published in addition
to financial reports. One of the earliest examples is the so-called ‘Triple P-Report’
(People, Planet and Profits) of Shell, published in 1999, whose title already
indicates its three-dimensional reporting character.
• Extended financial reports and integrated (business) reports: Selected environ-
mental (and social) aspects of corporate performance have received more atten-
tion in financial reports in recent years. Moreover, some companies integrate
their environmental and social reporting into their business reports and publish
only one integrated report.
While reports addressing single aspects of corporate sustainability can be of
certain use, stand-alone sustainability reports and fully integrated corporate reports
have received particular attention, especially among large companies. In certain parts
of the corporate sector the number of stand-alone sustainability reports nowadays
exceeds those of environmental reports. Likewise with environmental statements,
there is a trend towards more integrated reporting (BMU 2007). Important drivers for
the integration of environmental and social information in financial and annual
reports are the increasing interest of investors and analysts as well as regulatory
requirements (Hesse 2010; UNEP et al. 2010). The conflation of corporate gover-
nance, financial and sustainability reporting has recently been reinforced by the
establishment of the International Integrated Reporting Committee (www.theiirc.org).
Besides, stakeholder-specific sustainability reporting has been made easier through
the technological developments of the Internet. The many advantages of the Internet
have made it possible to publish short stand-alone reports that are linked to more in-
depth information provided on the corporate websites. Whereas innovation in reporting
formats is welcome, and can increase transparency and stakeholder involvement, the
continuous experimentation and change of reporting contents and formats by compa-
nies, sometimes from year to year, can hamper its comprehensibility and comparabi-
lity. Further problems and challenges of sustainability reporting are described next.

Specific Challenges in Sustainability Reporting

Corporate sustainability reporting is characterized by several specific challenges:

• Agreement over the terms sustainable development or corporate sustainability is
usually rather difficult as their meaning is context specific. In practice, the meaning
of corporate sustainability is often not made explicit or constructed as the usual
win-win rhetoric (Laine 2005). Moreover, the terminology applied to non- or