Sustainability Reporting in Networks

Abstract

The current development in the field of sustainability reporting and the rise of environmental information systems in organizations require a redevelopment of sustainability standards. Nowadays, companies are sharing information in increasingly higher amounts than in the 1990s. This leads to a demand for harmonization and support for automated information processing. Financial reporting faces this development e.g. by analyzing information demands of networks, analyzing requirements and interests for a network publicity. Network publicity in financial reporting provides the idea of adapting such developments for sustainability reporting as well. The objective of this paper is to describe and integrate approaches from different fields of research e.g. financial reporting, sustainability reporting, business informatics, environmental business informatics, which will serve as the basis for a later case study of the Eco-industrial park Bremen to be adapted for developing sustainability reporting in networks. In this case study, environmental business informatics with environmental information management and material flow management are used as environmental information sources. Research will finally lead to a reference architecture which will be evaluated in the case study Eco-industrial Park Bremen. The paper highlights different fields of research and approaches used to adopt sustainability reporting for networks.