Sustainability inter-linkages in reporting vindicated: a study of European companies

Recently, there has been a rapid growth in company sustainability reporting, as well as an improvement in quality of reports. A number of guidelines have been instrumental in this process; however, they still do not consider the importance of the inter-linkages and synergies among the different indicators and dimensions. This paper focuses on assessing sustainability inter-linkages in corporate sustainability reporting. For this study, the reports from fifty-three European companies, covering thirteen industries at A+ Global Reporting Initiative level and third party certified, were selected. These reports were analysed following a two prong, quasi-quantitative approach firstly by checking which of the reports covered any of the inter-linking issues, and secondly by checking how well these were covered (i.e. the performance). The results showed that, although not explicitly demanded by the guidelines, the coverage of the interlinking issues ranged from medium to high, whilst performance ranged from low to high. Given the holistic nature of business and of sustainability, and the lack of inclusion of this in the current reporting guidelines, this paper calls for an update of the theory, and of the guidelines, to ensure that a more systemic approach is adopted in business praxis. It also makes an appeal to SR managers and champions, and those compiling the reports, to actively look for the inter-linking issues and dimensions, in order to gain new insights with a view to reducing, or even avoiding, conflicts between/among issues. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.