Sustainability Report: Accounting Social Issues & Stakeholder Impact

This report provides a comprehensive overview of sustainability reporting in accounting, focusing on its significance, current state, and practices. It explores the need for sustainability reports, emphasizing their role in addressing societal expectations, government mandates, and transparency. The report delves into the state of sustainability reporting, highlighting the use of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) guidelines and the 'triple bottom line' framework. It examines various practices in sustainability reporting, including the concentration on material matters and stakeholder engagement. The report analyzes current social issues in accounting, such as ethical concerns, unqualified accountants, and the impact of technology and mergers on stakeholders. The findings reveal the growing interest in mandatory sustainability reporting and the adoption of GRI standards. Recommendations include making sustainability reporting mandatory, providing more information on GRI, and encouraging stakeholder collaboration. The report concludes by emphasizing the importance of sustainability reporting in addressing social and environmental issues and aiding financial decision-making. The report uses data from various sources such as the International Finance Corporation on Sustainability report, Global reporting initiative archive, Australian Department of Social Services and other reliable peer-reviewed articles and journals.

Sustainability Report 1
SUSTAINABILITY REPORT
Student’s (Name)
Institution

Sustainability Report 2
Executive summary
This report provides vast knowledge on sustainability reporting in accounting by
providing critical and information on the state, process, and need for sustainability reporting
especially how this analysis affects the stakeholders about decision making that is financially
oriented.
By use of high order analysis, this report contains research and studies of the current
social issues in accounting their evaluation relating to how they impact the stakeholders in the
decision making during their undertakings. The report considered the following areas in its
research on the sustainability reporting and social issues in accounting: the need, current state of
sustainability reporting, practices in sustainability reporting, social issues in accounting and their
impact on the stakeholders.
This report presents findings from various reliable and accurate sources such as the
International Finance Corporation on Sustainability report, Global reporting initiative archive,
Australian Department of Social Services and other reliable peer-reviewed articles and journals.
This report clearly shows the need for using this reporting framework and the current position of
this framework.
This report has used very current information especially in the compilation of
sustainability report to provide up to date information that I not misleading or outdated.

Sustainability Report 3
Table of Contents
Executive summary.........................................................................................................................2
Table of content...............................................................................................................................3
Introduction......................................................................................................................................4
Need for sustainability report.......................................................................................................4
State of sustainability report........................................................................................................5
Practices in sustainability reporting.............................................................................................5
Social issues in accounting and their impact on stakeholders.....................................................6
Findings...........................................................................................................................................6
Recommendation.............................................................................................................................7
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................7
Reference.........................................................................................................................................8

Sustainability Report 4
Introduction
A sustainability report is a report of an organization that provides information on the
organizations economic, social, and environmental and governance performance and function in
an organization, the emphasis of sustainability report is on social and environmental performance
(Roy, Salaam, and Parvez, 2015). Sustainably report not only outlines the performance of the
organization, but it also increases the organization's commitment towards sustainable
development.
Organizations improve their sustainability reporting by producing reports on the
sustainability performance. The key to analyzing the quality of an excellent sustainable report is
obtained from guidelines in Global reporting initiative (GRI). Social and ethical issues are
critical to the performance of any organization even as it seeks to improve its profitability as
addressed in the sustainability report (Junior, Best, and Cotter 2014).

Sustainability Report 5
Social issues are critical in the reputation and the performance of the organization and if
not critically considered could deteriorate the relationship between the organization and its
environment and examples of these are seen in the case of Volkswagen Emissions Scandal and
the Toshiba Accounting standards.
Social issues in accounting have a disparate impact on the stakeholders of any
organization (Kozlowski, Searcy and Bardecki 2015) even in the accounting industry. I will
discuss the current social issues in accounting and their effect on the stakeholders mostly
considering the organization called dominos.
Need for a sustainability report
A sustainability report is a key to the stakeholders of any given company in the making of
vital decisions whether financial or not. Some of the choices could include whether to invest in
the organization or provide funding among other reasons but the first question that is asked even
before looking at the state of sustainability, below are the needs for sustainability report:
a) Changing landscape of the society
There is a heightened expectation of the surrounding environment and other smaller
institutions concerning the role and benefits of the organization that is situated around them,
therefore, need sustainability report in meeting this expectation.
b) The role of the government
Organizations especially government agencies have a mandate of managing the public
resources properly in a manner that promotes sustainable development fulfilling the interest of
the citizens who are stakeholders in the government agencies.
c) The need for transparency

Sustainability Report 6
There is a need for organizations especially in public sector to be transparent about their
management and how it affects the society, this is only possible when they produce a
sustainability report.
d) Towards global alignment
The issue of sustainability report has become a global issue with the growth of national
policies that advocate for this report by organizations with Global Reporting Institute (GRI) as
the framework that is globally known for the provision of independent reporting framework
(Ballou, Heitger, Landes and Adams 2006).
State of a sustainability report
The use of sustainability report has continued to become one of the best criteria for
determining the social responsibility of organizations in Australia and the world at large. It
communicates the plans of the organization to both the internal and external stakeholders of an
organization thereby influencing their r planning and decision making concerning their role or
involvement in the organization.
The global reporting initiatives are used as the reporting guidelines and standard for non-
official measures. It provides metrics, quality analysis, and quality check process to increase and
guide the reporting procedure in the organization (Barkemeyer Preuss and Lee 2015).
Recently there have been training on the use of this framework in reporting especially in
the united states to enable organizations to produce sustainability report which is almost
becoming essential for all organizations.
An organization that produces this report mainly use the ‘triple bottom line’ framework.
Triple bottom line (TBL) is framework comprising of three parts; financial (economic), social
and environmental. The organization uses TBL in the evaluation of their performances brings the

Sustainability Report 7
idea that an organization must not only focus on earning profits but also the improvement of
people’s lives and the environment (Samudhram, Siew, Sinnakkannu and Yeow 2016).
Currently, several awards are given to best sustainability reporting that is recognized in
Australia and overseas. These are The Australasian Reporting Award (ARA) which was
established in 1951in Australia, and over time it became to be known abroad. The other one is
The Association of Certified Chartered Accountants (ACCA) which provides the award for over
20 countries around the globe.
Practices in sustainability reporting
The methods in sustainability reporting include:
Concentration on material matters: To determine the issues that matter most companies
use GRI guidelines (Higgins, Milne, and Van Gramberg 2015).
Companies are changing their sustainability report to align with the company’s strategy
and in addressing the issue of internal and external stakeholders.
Some companies have continued to partner with GRI to learn how to produce
sustainability reports.
Companies have opted to engage stakeholders in making the sustainability report to
provide connectivity in gaining input from all the stakeholders.
Social issues in accounting and their impact on stakeholders.
Current social issues have ended up affecting different stakeholders. Differently,
stakeholders mentioned in the accounting sector include the shareholder, management, the
customers and the bank employees.

Sustainability Report 8
Social and ethical issues: in recent times there has been a reduction in ethics among some
accountants (Herremans, Nazari and Mahmoudian 2016) leading to unethical behavior while
attending to stakeholders resulting to scandals, this, in turn, leads to a reduction of customers and
the shareholders will lose profits.
Unqualified accountants: there has been the rise of unqualified accountants on the
internet who carry out accounting poorly after opening a business on the internet, this has led to
lack of trust in online banking and accountants.
Online technology: with the introduction of online technology there has been the
introduction of accounting applications, despite their sufficiency, there is a lot one individual
learn by meeting accountants on one on one basis hence customers end up missing in vast
accounting knowledge while shareholders shares reduce (Endrikat, Hartmann and Schreck 2017).
Business amalgamation and social roles: to sustain themselves a lot of banks have opted
for merges, this has led to merging of accountants who conflict in interest and knowledge
thereby reducing the delivery of services offered by the accountants to the customers due to the
conflict in social roles.
Remuneration: There have been cases with the demand of pay rise if the pay is not made
the accountants are not motivated (Sierra‐García, Grima and García‐Benau, 2015) hence they
may provide common services leading to a reduction in customers and the shareholders will
surely lose.
Human resource management: One of the most significant problems is in human resource
management especially in dealing with conflict in the organization, if conflict, whether agency
conflicts are not dealt with correctly the whole organization, will perish.

Sustainability Report 9
Findings
According to a study by Australian Center for Corporate Social Responsibility (ACSR) in
Australia and New Zealand, 53% of the organizations observed said that they wanted
sustainability report to be mandatory.
According to a study by the state of sustainability reporting in Australia 40% of
organizations were attributed to the use of GRI in their sustainability report and 30% of this 40
% could clearly show how GRI worked and its use.
In a study by UNCTAD in countries in its membership between May 2012 and June
2013, the number of companies that published sustainability report increased from 96 to 157
companies.
Some companies are confused between focusing on whether to focus on critical
organizational issues or to focus on meeting their social responsibility
Most organizations have opted to produce the sustainability report alongside is annual
report example National Australia Bank (NAB) and Dominos amongst many others.
In the case study of Dominos:
Dominos is involved in the generation of sustainability reports as it generates its annual
reports, some of the activities it is engaged in within the community are the provision of relief
during a disaster, provision of food to the needy, provision of funds in the education of youths
and leadership and entrepreneur activities.
Recommendation

Sustainability Report 10
I recommend that sustainability reporting should be made mandatory in the organization
after they have been adequately taught how to produce the reports.
From the finding, there is the growth of organizations generating a sustainable report, but
most of them are not doing it according to the GRI standards which means that there is a need for
more information on GRI so that companies can implement them.
Most of the social issues that are affecting companies can also be dealt with by the
generation of sustainability reports in the organizations (Visser and Tolhurst 2017), the use of
sustainability report should, therefore, be encouraged in such institutions.
Organizations should work further with all the stakeholders in the production of
sustainability report in ensuring that there is cohesion in the application of the report (Ioannou
and Serafeim 2017). Moreover, investment in new technology is not bad but organizations
should invest carefully to avoid interfering with the environment ecosystem because of trying to
improve its production.
Conclusion
In conclusion sustainability report is a documented story that provides information
concerning the economic, governance and social information about a company, there is need to
implement this model by using the GRI model, implementation of sustainability report will help
in dealing with cases of social and environmental issues and it will also help other stakeholders
in making financial decisions whether to invest, bank or own shares in a company.

Sustainability Report 11
Reference
Ballou, B., Heitger, D.L., Landes, C.E. and Adams, M., 2006. The future of corporate
sustainability reporting. Journal of Accountancy, 202(6), p.65.
Barkemeyer, R., Preuss, L. and Lee, L., 2015. On the effectiveness of private transnational
governance regimes—Evaluating corporate sustainability reporting according to the Global
Reporting Initiative. Journal of World Business, 50(2), pp.312-325.
Cahyandito, M.F., Corporate Sustainability Reporting. Abstrak.
Endrikat, J., Hartmann, F. and Schreck, P., 2017. Social and ethical issues in management
accounting and control: an editorial.
Herremans, I.M., Nazari, J.A. and Mahmoudian, F., 2016. Stakeholder relationships,
engagement, and sustainability reporting. Journal of Business Ethics, 138(3), pp.417-435.
Higgins, C., Milne, M.J. and Van Gramberg, B., 2015. The uptake of sustainability reporting in
Australia. Journal of Business Ethics, 129(2), pp.445-468.
Hronová, V.K.Š., Corporate Sustainability Reporting. INNOVATION MANAGEMENT,
ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND SUSTAINABILITY 2017, p.505.
Ioannou, I. and Serafeim, G., 2017. The consequences of mandatory corporate sustainability
reporting.
Junior, R.M., Best, P.J. and Cotter, J., 2014. Sustainability reporting and assurance: A historical
analysis on a world-wide phenomenon. Journal of Business Ethics, 120(1), pp.1-11.
Kozlowski, A., Searcy, C. and Bardecki, M., 2015. Corporate sustainability reporting in the
apparel industry: an analysis of indicators disclosed. International Journal of Productivity and
Performance Management, 64(3), pp.377-397.

Sustainability Report 12
Roy, M.K., Salam Sarker, M. and Parvez, S., 2015. Sustainability in Banking Industry: Which
way to move? ASA University Review, 9(2).
Samudhram, A., Siew, E.G., Sinnakkannu, J. and Yeow, P.H., 2016. Towards a new paradigm:
Activity level balanced sustainability reporting. Applied ergonomics, 57, pp.94-104.
Sierra‐García, L., Zorio‐Grima, A. and García‐Benau, M.A., 2015. Stakeholder engagement,
corporate social responsibility and integrated reporting: an exploratory study. Corporate Social
Responsibility and Environmental Management, 22(5), pp.286-304.
Visser, W. and Tolhurst, N., 2017. The world guide to CSR: A country-by-country analysis of
corporate sustainability and responsibility. Routledge.