ACCT207: Financial Accounting Assignment - GRI Report Discussion

This essay, prepared for an ACCT207 Financial Accounting assignment, explores the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) report. It begins with an introduction to sustainability reporting and its importance for transparency. The main body of the essay discusses the reasons for and against preparing a GRI report, emphasizing the role of GRI in promoting social, environmental, and economic sustainability through the Triple Bottom Line (TBL) framework. The essay acknowledges criticisms regarding the complexity and burden of GRI standards, particularly for smaller companies. The reflection section highlights the student's understanding of sustainability as crucial for the earth's survival and the accountant's role in promoting social justice and sustainable benefits. The student emphasizes the importance of TBL, GRI's tools, and the opportunities and challenges that sustainability offers accountants. The essay concludes with a discussion of stakeholder engagement and the accountant's role in providing useful information for sustainable performance. The document includes references and bibliography, adhering to the Harvard style format.

Running Head: FINANCIAL ACCOUNTING
FINANCIAL ACCOUNTING
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Table of Contents
Introduction...................................................................................................................2
Discussion.....................................................................................................................2
Sustainable Reporting...............................................................................................2
Reasons for and against Global Reporting Initiative Report Preparation.................2
Conclusion....................................................................................................................3
Reflection......................................................................................................................3
Reference & Bibliography.............................................................................................6

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Introduction
Sustainability reporting is the tool used for increasing accountability and
transparency in the issues. The investment in sustainability continues to grow
popularly, however, lack of the standardization in reporting of sustainability poses
great challenge for the investors, who wishes to maximize social responsibility and
minimize social damages of the investments (Simmons Jr, Crittenden and
Schlegelmilch 2018). The GRI standards are designed for the companies to use it for
reporting their impacts on social, environmental, society and the economy. It is
structured as set of the interrelated standards. Hence, this report aims for discussing
reasons for and against preparation of Global Reporting Initiative report.
Discussion
Sustainable Reporting
Sustainability reporting is key platform for communication of the sustainability
impacts and performances. It is the report regarding social and environmental
performances. It enables the organizations for considering their impacts on wider
range of the sustainability issues, which ultimately helps them for being more
transparent regarding opportunities and risks they faces.
Reasons for and against Global Reporting Initiative Report Preparation
The definition of World Commission of sustainability is conceptually helpful,
but it lacks specificity. “Triple Bottom Line” provides initial point to develop the ways
to identify and develop the actions, which contributes to three sustainability facets
that is environment, economy and social equity. GRI was developed by non-profit
organization based in Boston, Ceres, along with “United Nations Environmental
Programme”. “The Global Reporting Initiative” is international, independent and the
multi-stakeholder non-profit organization, which helps in promoting social,
environmental and economic sustainability. GRI provides the criteria for measuring
behavior of company in each leg of “Triple Bottom Line”. Initially fifty companies has
released guidelines of sustainability reporting that was released by the Ceres.
Afterwards, this number increased rapidly (Hąbek 2014). The system of GRI is
modeled after GAAP that provides the ways for simplifying and unifying the
conflicting methodologies of accounting. Similarly, GRI puts TBL reporting into the
format that helps in promoting influence, comparability, usefulness and accuracy

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(Fernandez-Feijoo, Romero and Ruiz 2014). Further, guidelines of GRI helps
company in managing its overall impact on TBL, as it improves transparency and
quality of sustainability reporting and provides balanced and reasonable presentation
of performance (Domingues et al. 2017).
After the release of guidelines of GRI, the debate started for and against its
preparation. The guidelines of sustainability reporting have developed by GRI, which
strives for increasing accountability and social, economic and environmental
performance and it helps in providing all the companies with the comprehensive
framework of sustainability reporting, which is used widely around world (Milne and
Gray 2013).
The reason behind preparation of “The Global Reporting Initiative” report is
because sustainability reporting based on standards of GRI helps in providing
reasonable and balanced representation of company’s negative and positive
contribution towards sustainable development goals (Kuzey and Uyar 2017). This
process attempts to recognize its key impacts on the economy, society or
environment and then discloses them according with globally-accepted standards
(Globalreporting.org. 2020). However, the criticism against GRI has to do with
numbers of the expected indicators as well as inclusion of the assessment of value
chain for better defining broader negative and positive impacts of organization.
These critics states that this is too burdensome for the smaller company and too
complex for the multinationals (del Mar Alonso‐Almeida, Llach and Marimon 2014).
Conclusion
Hence, it can be said that even though there are some criticism against GRI, it
is globally used system that have become benchmark around world to measure,
monitor as well as reporting the efforts of corporate sustainability. It helps in
providing the way to public for examining claims of the sustainability in the light of
actual practices. It has been analyzed that globally, there are increasing number of
the highly visible multinational entities that are participating in GRI.
Reflection
I have learned that sustainability is not considered as new slogan, rather it is
important for the survival of earth. The increasing demand of public for the
responsible behavior of corporate matches with the increasing awareness of

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sustainable development need. TBL provides the way for identifying sustainable
development by considering at effects of activity on environment, social equity and
economy. Now, GRI has become the tool that is internationally recognized to
measure progress of company towards sustainability. The tools of GRI are based on
TBL that gives businesses way for pursuing sustainable development in the
concreate ways.
I think in this concern, the accountant plays major role in improvement of
social justice and making contributions towards sustainable benefits on global basis.
The sustainability concept is concept that involves operating in the way, which takes
the full account of impact of company on the people, planet and future. I understand
that sustainability offers some of the vital opportunities as well as challenges for the
accountants. Further, increased level of pressures and transparency for extending
boundaries of responsibility are able to highlight importance of the clear policies of
corporate for protecting reputation of corporate and gaining competitive advantage.
A wider ranges of the issues of social, economic and environmental issues
represents opportunity as well as threat.
I think that information’s credibility regarding sustainability is supported by the
processes of accounting. In the business, accountants are engaged in checking,
monitoring as well as interpreting the information that relates to environmental, social
and the economic impacts. The profession of accounting has traditionally responded
to the shifts and changes of market in the expectation of public. Sustainability helps
in offering such kind of opportunities. It is hardly surprising that some practices of
accountancy have become involved in the recent years for providing assurances and
advice services relating to the sustainability reporting and performance. There are
various mechanism with the help of which government, societies and individuals
seeks to influence outcomes, which would be delivered by the market for enhancing
sustainability aspects for instance, economic, environmental and the social
performance. Moreover, profession of accounting plays major role in helping to
choose the appropriate mechanism and making them to work efficiently. The heart of
profession’s contribution is recognition of significance of useful information.
I therefore think that stakeholder engagement enables those with the
particular interest for influencing behavior and decisions of the entity to engage entity

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in ongoing dialogue and process of the feedback from and to stakeholders that is
supported by thee flows of information regarding sustainable performances.

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Reference & Bibliography
del Mar Alonso‐Almeida, M., Llach, J. and Marimon, F., 2014. A closer look at the
‘Global Reporting Initiative’sustainability reporting as a tool to implement
environmental and social policies: A worldwide sector analysis. Corporate Social
Responsibility and Environmental Management, 21(6), pp.318-335.
Domingues, A.R., Lozano, R., Ceulemans, K. and Ramos, T.B., 2017. Sustainability
reporting in public sector organisations: Exploring the relation between the reporting
process and organisational change management for sustainability. Journal of
environmental management, 192, pp.292-301.
Fernandez-Feijoo, B., Romero, S. and Ruiz, S., 2014. Commitment to corporate
social responsibility measured through global reporting initiative reporting: Factors
affecting the behavior of companies. Journal of Cleaner Production, 81, pp.244-254.
Globalreporting.org. 2020. [online] Available at:
https://www.globalreporting.org/standards/media/1036/gri-101-foundation-2016.pdf
[Accessed 8 Mar. 2020].
Hąbek, P., 2014. Evaluation of sustainability reporting practices in Poland. Quality &
Quantity, 48(3), pp.1739-1752.
Kuzey, C. and Uyar, A., 2017. Determinants of sustainability reporting and its impact
on firm value: Evidence from the emerging market of Turkey. Journal of cleaner
production, 143, pp.27-39.
Milne, M.J. and Gray, R., 2013. W (h) ither ecology? The triple bottom line, the global
reporting initiative, and corporate sustainability reporting. Journal of business
ethics, 118(1), pp.13-29.
Simmons Jr, J.M., Crittenden, V.L. and Schlegelmilch, B.B., 2018. The Global
Reporting Initiative: do application levels matter?. Social Responsibility Journal.