Balance Scorecard and Sustainability Reporting

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ADVANCED MANAGEMENT ACCOUNTING.
BALANCE SCORECARD AND SUSTAINABILITY REPORTING
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ADVANCED MANAGEMENT ACCOUNTING.
Balance scorecard and sustainability reporting.
Sustainability Reporting.
According to Cohen, (2018) sustainability reporting is an organizations report
trying to demonstrate/show the company’s environmental, economic and social impacts
on its everyday activities. It links the organization's overall strategy to its commitment to
the sustainability global economic idea. Through sustainability reporting, the company is
able to present its values and governance model that eventually helps in measuring and
understanding their main role to the commitment of a green economy. In an
organization, the sustainability report acts as the main communication platform for
negative or positive sustainability performance results (Cohen, 2018).
In Eweje, (2014) the more small enterprises are enjoining those large enterprises
practicing the corporate social responsibility, the more the sustainability concept is
widening up in the economy. More companies are embarking on how to reduce their
impacts on the green environment by participating more on their benefits to the
community. When such organizations are required to prepare their periodical
sustainability report, the report needs to include the overall company’s objectives,
overall goals, and overall tactics to achieve those goals as well as the overall benefits
from such activities to both the enterprise and the surrounding community (Eweje,
2014).
According to Loska, (2011), sustainable reporting combines the financial and
non-financial elements that contribute to the development of the entire organizations
under the integrated reporting. Due to the difference in nature of the business
accounting reporting, sustainability reporting can also be referred the triple bottom line
reporting, non-financial reporting or corporate social responsibility reporting (CSR)
(Loska, 2011).
Why public listed companies adopt sustainability reporting.
Although sustainability reporting should be prepared by organizations of all
nature in the world, the benefits of its release supersede its existence in the industry. At
the 21st-century sustainability reporting has emerged to be the best practice to ensure

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ADVANCED MANAGEMENT ACCOUNTING.
overall disclosure by community-oriented companies worldwide. Ideally focusing on
sustainability have improved the organizations operating efficiency on natural
resources, triggering the importance of managing the social environment amenities
such as their employees, shareholders and related stakeholders. Benefits of
sustainability reports include; improved risk management, improved customer
confidence, increased innovation and improved overall corporate reputation (Ramanan,
2018).
Accordingly, public listed companies such as the WealthWise insurance
company need to adopt sustainability reports for various reasons as below:
Good reputation. In Ernst & Young, (2017) corporate reputation survey showed
that more than 50% of the target respondents reported sustainability reports as the
basis of improved transparency and positive deeds for the success of a public entity. A
public listed company releasing out its periodical sustainable reports has a higher
chance of been trusted by the different classes of shareholders as compared to that
does not issue out the report. Corporate sustainable reports help in engaging the
stakeholders in the different activities the company is engaged such as corporate social
responsibility (CSR) and in this case the stakeholders get the chance to account
support for the value creation occasion (D’Aquila, 2018).
Improved efficiency and waste reduction. According to Ernst & Young, (2017) on
the global survey of sustainability reports, indicated that decision-making process is
more efficient in such organization adapted to the sustainability reports as compared to
those do not. For the reports requires the organization to gather and collect financial
and non-financial data, this data is however used to interprets the past performance and
used as a benchmark for the coming financial year. In such the listed company gets an
easier way to budget for the future and in most cases, such budgets turn to be an exact
budget without having a midterm budget review. The exact budget improves the daily
performance of the organizations resulting in reduced product wastage (Machado &
Davim, 2016).
Engaging stakeholders and honesty. According to Ayars, (2011), companies in
the emerging world have identified the change in performance-based reporting.