Inter-organisational Sustainability Reporting – A harmonized XRBL approach based on GRI G4 XBRL and further Guidelines

Abstract

The ongoing development and the alterations of sustainability reporting, like the change towards internet-based reporting which allows stakeholder orientation and integration of supply chain disclosure, will lead to an increased generation of sustainability reports (or corporate social responsibility reporting). By April 2012, 53% of the S&P 500 companies provide corporate sustainability reports and 63% are based on the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) guidelines, 5% are referencing towards GRI so that only 32% are non-GRI reports. This is a huge increase of sustainability reporting compared to 19%-20% in 2011. [1] A proposed Directive of the Council of the European Communities [2] regarding the disclosure of nonfinancial and diversity information by certain large companies and groups, what will be realized by sustainability reports, will possible lead to mandatory reporting instead of voluntary reporting. Larger companies and groups will force their suppliers to report impacts of their processes and products in the supply chain due to supply chain disclosure. Therefore, companies are forced to reduce efforts in the process of generating a sustainability report, increase the value and accessibility of reports by machine readable reports. The paper will present the approach of inter-organizational sustainability reporting to enrich the current GRI G4 XBRL [3] version towards an inter-organisational reporting. Further guidelines for harmonizing such as United Nations Global Compact [4], Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises [5], Eco Management and Audit Scheme III [6] and European Federation of Financial Analysts Societies [7] to overcome the necessity to use bridge documents will be shown. Further, ideas how to integrate the inter-organisational sustainability reporting approach will be discussed.