A Comprehensive Analysis of Sustainability Reporting using GRI

This report explores the increasing relevance of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and its connection to sustainability reporting. It highlights how organizations are using sustainability reports, guided by frameworks like the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), to demonstrate transparency and ethical conduct across economic, social, and environmental dimensions. The report emphasizes the importance of adhering to GRI's guiding principles for content and quality to ensure credibility and comparability. It also contrasts enterprise-level reporting with standard reporting, using Eve Investment company as an example. Furthermore, the report discusses the significance of stakeholder engagement and the benefits of sustainability reporting in terms of corporate reputation and internal operations. The analysis covers essential aspects of a sustainability report, including strategy, organizational profile, material aspects, and ethical considerations, providing a comprehensive overview of the GRI framework and its application in assessing organizational impact.

Running Head: SUSTAINABILITY REPORTING
Sustainability Reporting
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Every day Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) becomes more relevant and
meaningful, little by little it ceases to be perceived as philanthropy, assistance, fashion, spending,
regulation, marketing, the environment, a department or a strategy. The subject has been
investigated, in fact, in the previous study carried out by Fonseca, McAllister & Fitzpatrick
(2014) they conclude that the permanence in the market, the strengthening and entrepreneurial
benefit, are a consequence of the activities that the organizations carry out in relation to their
social responsibility, as a result of strategic management in the culture of CSR, as interest groups
increasingly demand to account for it. In that same sense, the organization in its planning
strategy. It finds that one of the most effective and accepted measures to demonstrate its
transparency and ethics, is the preparation and publication of the sustainability report, understood
sustainability from the approach of the three pillars known as "triple bottom line" or areas of
action: the economic area, the area of social action and the scope of environmental actions. In
other words, any sustainability report aims to reflect how an organization contributes in the
future, to improve or not the conditions, advances and economic, environmental and social trends
in the areas of influence, whether local, regional and international.
At the enterprise level, there are several methodologies to evaluate the dimensions of
sustainability, however, the most accepted at the international level is that provided by the
Global Reporting Initiative (GRI). Not in vain, in their databases are more than 31,097 reports.
The firm KPMG in one of its articles published in 2013 corroborates that GRI provides a
framework for the preparation of sustainability reports based on credibility, consistency and
comparability, becoming a global standard (KPMG 2013). In order to provide organizations with
a guiding framework that guarantees transparency in the information reported, it is clearly
defined in this methodology that companies to prepare their respective sustainability reports

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should be guided by guiding principles in both content (Participation of groups of interest,
context of sustainability, materiality, completeness) as well as quality (Balance, comparability,
precision, periodicity, clarity and reliability). Similarly, the definition in terms of content and
scope. The purpose of the GRI methodology is to contribute to the fact that the information
disclosed by the companies on the economic, social and environmental aspects complies with
easily comparable homogeneous criteria, that is, helps companies.
A clear proof that enterprise level reporting is different from standard reporting is seen in
the case of Eve Investment company. The company’s 2017 report clearly shows that the
company focused only on the economic component of sustainability report. Eve Investment
company does not
According to the international context, more frequently, interest groups as dynamic and
participatory actors, ask for accounts about the responsibility assumed by organizations with
respect to the impacts generated by their actions, their own nature on ecological, environmental
and social environments, For this reason, it is important to know in the radius of local action,
such as the behavior of reporting companies, regarding issues of social, economic and
environmental sustainability within the country and, in accordance with this, to envisage the
prospects of lessening impacts, improve the situation with the environment, that is, the actions
taken from the information provided.
Global Reporting Initiative helps companies, governments and other organizations to
understand and communicate to their respective stakeholders the impact that these organizations
have on sustainability issues such as climate change, human rights, corruption, among others.
Currently, about 93% of the 250 largest companies in the world report in this format. The

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preparation of sustainability reports helps organizations set goals, measure performance and
manage change in order to make their operations more sustainable.
Sustainability reports contain information on the impact of organizations, whether
positive or negative, on the environment, society and the economy. In this way, the memories
turn the abstract into tangible and concrete and, therefore, help to understand and manage the
consequences that new developments in sustainability have on the activities and strategy of each
organization (Farneti and Guthrie, 2009).
Companies that prepare their sustainability reports socialize important benefits in terms
of increasing their corporate reputation, improving internal operations and building relationships
(AccionRSE, 2007, p.9). As reported on the official GRI website, there were 11 first reports
published in 2000, for 2005, there were already 300 reports worldwide. By January 5, 2016,
31,097 reports, belonging to 90 countries and 37 different economic sectors have published their
sustainability report, of which 1,926 used the latest GRI4 version.
The main objective of the current version, GRI4, is "to help the report writers to prepare
significant sustainability reports in which useful data on the most important issues for each
organization related to sustainability are collected, as well as contributing to the preparation of
reports becomes a habitual practice. "(GRI, 2013a, p.3). Likewise, from the source they prepare
guides and manuals to facilitate to the companies, independently of their size, sector or location,
the elaboration, the publication and the socialization of the respective memory of sustainability
(Dumay, Guthrie and Farneti, 2010).
Similarly, the GRI4 version allows the organization to define the level of application of
the methodology, regardless of its size, type, sector or location, can choose between two options,

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essential (consists of the fundamental elements of a sustainability report (Brown, de Jong &
Levy, 2009).
It constitutes a framework through which organizations transmit the consequences of
their economic, environmental, social and government performance) or exhaustive (extends the
Essential incorporating new basic contents related to strategy, analysis, government, ethics and
the integrity of organizations. In addition, they must describe their performance in a more
detailed way, for which they have to cover all the indicators related to the material aspects), said
choice of application, automatically selects the elements that are part of their respective report.
To broaden the scope of the methodology, the aspects requested are listed below, according to
"the guide for the preparation of sustainability reports" suggested by GRI to companies (Chen,
Feldmann & Tang, 2015).
Sustainable report should cover a number of aspects. The first aspect concern strategy
and analysis. This is statement made by the main decision-maker, about the importance of
sustainability, in which to help understand issues of a strategic nature, that is, socialize the
vision, the short, medium and long-term strategy (Global Reporting Initiative 2013b). Eve
Investment did not cover this aspect exhaustively in 2017 annual report (Eve Investments, 2017).
The second aspect is organizational profile. It describes the general image of the
characteristics of the organization, aspects such as name, products, services and most important
brands, size, number of employees, among others (Chen, Tang & Feldmann, 2015). Eve
Investment covered this area but failed to include all of these features. For example, it does not
include the number of employees. Each product is not given enough descriptions (Eve
Investments, 2017).

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The third aspects entail identification of material aspects and coverage of the report: This
section defines the organization, what are its material aspects and coverage, according to this, the
information and indicators to be included in the report are determined. Likewise, a guide is
presented to make the respective determination, which consists of four steps: Identification,
prioritization, validation and revision (Crane, atten and Spence, 2008).
The fourth aspect entails participation of interest groups. Here, the report should focus on
their relevance, identification and relationship with the organization is analyzed. There is also
aspect of memory profile. It presents an overview of the basic information of the memory,
external verification, aspects such as periodicity, date of last report among others.
There is also a place for government. This is composed of 22 indicators that account for
appointments, aspects such as; composition, functions, governance structure, role of the superior
body, among others, in the same way coverage is broadly defined in topics such as senior
management, higher governance body and dual administration system. In addition, the report
should cover ethics and integrity. In this part, the values, principles, standards and norms of the
organization, its internal and external mechanisms of advice for the sake of ethical and licit
conduct, among others, are socialized.
Apart from these general aspects, there are other specific aspects that should be included
in reporting. This include information on the management approach. This comprises of indicators
that account for management in material aspects and indicators and information on economic
performance category (impact of organizations on the economic situation of interest groups and
local, national and international economic systems.) It does not focus, therefore, on the financial
situation of the organization itself. as economic performance, presence in the market, indirect
economic consequences, procurement practices), environmental performance category (impacts

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on water, land, air, biodiversity, effluents, ecosystems, regulatory compliance) and social
performance category (4 subcategories; and decent work, human rights, society and product
responsibility).

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References
Brown, H. S., de Jong, M., & Levy, D. L. (2009). Building institutions based on information
disclosure: lessons from GRI's sustainability reporting. Journal of Cleaner Production,
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Brundtland, GH (1987). Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development:
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Chen, L., Feldmann, A., & Tang, O. (2015). The relationship between disclosures of corporate
social performance and financial performance: Evidence from GRI reports in
manufacturing industry. International Journal of Production Economics, DOI: 10.1016 /
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Chen, L., Tang, O., & Feldmann, A. (2015). Applying GRI reports for the investigation of
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India. Journal of Cleaner Production, 98, 36-46.
Crane, A., Matten, D. and Spence, L. J. (2008). Corporate Social Responsibility. Readings and
Cases in a Global Context. London, Routledge
Dumay, J., Guthrie, J. and Farneti, F. (2010). GRI Sustainability Reporting Guidelines for Public
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Fonseca, A., McAllister, ML, & Fitzpatrick, P. (2014). Sustainability reporting among mining
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exec-summary .pdf .
Eve Investments, (2017). Annual Report 2017. Retrieved from:
http://www.eveinvestments.com.au/sites/default/files/eve-investments-ar-2017.pdf