Professional Documents
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DOI:
10.1016/j.jclepro.2016.06.006
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JCLP 7377
To appear in:
31 May 2016
Please cite this article as: Maas K, Schaltegger S, Crutzen N, Advancing the integrating corporate
sustainability measurement, management and reporting, Journal of Cleaner Production (2016), doi:
10.1016/j.jclepro.2016.06.006.
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Advancing the integrating corporate sustainability measurement,
management and reporting
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Karen Maas
Impact Centre Erasmus (ICE), Erasmus School of Accounting & Assurance, Erasmus
University Rotterdam, the Netherlands
Stefan Schaltegger
Centre for Sustainability Management (CSM), Leuphana University Lneburg, Germany
Nathalie Crutzen
Smart City Institute (SCI), HEC-Management School, University of Liege, Belgium
Abstract
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well as sustainability reporting has been researched extensively. However this has been
mainly done in an isolated manner. This Special Volume is dedicated to the question how to
integrate sustainability assessment, management accounting, management control, and
reporting. This Special Volume aims to advance our knowledge about how to integrate
sustainability assessment, management accounting, management control, and reporting by
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nineteen state-of-the art and innovative papers. The main message from across the articles is
that there is no one-size-fits-all approach and that we need creative, targeted and strategic
approaches to integrate these different management areas, departments and rationales with
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the support of integrating accounting and reporting tools to help companies to become true
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1. Introduction
Corporate sustainability (Dyllick & Hockerts, 2002; van Marrewijk, 2003) requires the
integrative measurement and management of sustainability issues rather than isolated
applications of different tools in different parts of the organization. While the initial process
of developing sustainability management research and practice has so far resulted in the
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proposal and experimenting of a multitude of sustainability measurement (e.g. Clarkson et al.,
2011; Gray et al., 1996) and information management approaches (e.g. Bonacchi and Rinaldi,
2007; Schaltegger and Wagner, 2006) it has become time to think more deeply about the
integration of different methods and how their interplay can support progress in corporate
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sustainability.
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management accounting, management control, and reporting, this Special Volume compiles a
series of articles dealing with different aspects of integration.
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In the accounting literature, as well as in the strategic management literature, the focus has so
far been on answering the question why companies should be involved in sustainability
issues. Emphasis has been placed on motives (e.g. Bansal, 2005; Nikolaeva and Bicho, 2011),
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the business case (Carroll and Shabana, 2010; Schaltegger and Burritt, 2015), business
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models (Schaltegger et al., 2012; 2016) and the development of multiple sustainability
management tools (e.g. Windolph et al., 2014). The role of sustainability performance
measurement, management accounting and control as well as sustainability reporting has
been researched extensively. However this has been mainly done in an isolated manner
(Chenhall, 2003; Ferreira and Otley, 2009). The more strategic and integrative questions as
how to strategically integrate these internal systems has not received much attention yet. How
do companies link accounting and reporting in sustainability management? How are
appropriate data obtained and how are they used to support decision making, management
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control, performance management and incentive systems when assessing the success of a
companys sustainability?
For reporting purposes, companies mainly collect data for lagging indicators. Although this
information is of potential use by providing evidence about past performance, relevance for
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management accounting, control and reporting systems (Eccles and Krzus, 2010; Eccles and
Saltzman, 2011). Although these elements are often addressed separately, it is becoming
increasingly obvious and urgent that for effective improvement of sustainability performance
all must be addressed in an integrated manner (e.g. Schaltegger and Wagner, 2006; Malmi
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and Brown, 2008). How do and can companies integrate these different management areas,
departments and rationales with the support of integrating accounting and reporting tools in a
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way that helps companies to become true transition leaders towards sustainability?
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methodological papers as well as case studies from different regions of the world. Table 1
provides an overview of the selected papers of this special volume and their specific focus on
different integration links. The key points of each paper are described below.
Transparency
Performance improvement
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Measurement
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Table 1. Focus of the papers of this special volume on different integration links.
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Management &
Communication
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Integration
By focusing on the link between measurement and transparency the paper of Antolin-Lopez
et al. (2016) compares the most widely used Corporate Sustainability Performance
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advance toward a more standardized list of sub-dimensions that should be covered when
accounting for the economic, social and environmental dimensions of corporate
sustainability. While the extant literature has not dealt very deeply with the link between
measurement approaches to create transparency the paper of Antolin-Lopez et al. (2016)
shows the relevance and potential do further investigate this link with future research.
Various papers in this special volume cover the link between management & communication
and creating transparency. Higgins and Coffey (2016) explore three different sustainability
reports set up to show what sustainability reports 'do' - in order to offer insights about what
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they 'could do'. They found that the companies are using sustainability reporting strategically,
and that sustainability is embedded into the company's strategic priorities. Where
sustainability reports mostly narrate and argue a point of view, sustainability reporting can
offer additional benefits by transiting towards dialogue.
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The paper of Grtrk and Hahn (2016) focuses on external third parties to assure of
sustainability reports. They examine the quality of, as well as the similarities and differences
between assurance statements in sustainability reports by using content analysis. The results
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assurance statements.
Montecchia et al. (2016) use a legitimacy theory framework to understand the extent to which
listed companies incorporate sustainability information in a coherent and unique framework.
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A content analysis of corporate websites and main documents was performed to develop a
Corporate Social Disclosure Index and an Integration Index aimed at identifying the
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correlation between the quality of disclosure and the integration among documents. They
found that only those few leading companies with a high level of Corporate Social Disclosure
have an equally high level of content integration.
The paper of Perego et al. (2016) analyzes the challenging and contested field of
implementation of Integrated Reporting. Their paper uses a qualitative approach to
accomplish two objectives. First, their paper provides a review of the embryonic academic
literature in the integrated reporting field to summarize extant knowledge. Second, the
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authors use semi-structured interviews to analyze and present the sensemaking approach of
three key experts impacting integrated reporting practices at the global level. Their findings
suggest that experts perceive the field to be fragmented and believe that most companies
currently have a weak understanding of the business value of integrated reporting.
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Seele (2016) reviews two major trends from distinct bodies of literature: "integrated
reporting" from the sustainability field and unified data based "XBRL-integrated reports" as
established in financial reporting making use of the digital standard XBRL (eXtensible
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statements are derived pointing at gaps and issues in the field of sustainability reporting and
management. Following this review, he proposes a new concept called "digitally unified
reporting" that addresses these issues. The core contribution is an XBRL-based approach to
sustainability reporting that combines digital data management of sustainability performance
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Based on a case study in a large industrial firm, de Villiers et al. (2016) develop a new
conceptual model of the influences that drive companies towards sustainability, and show the
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Thijssens et al. (2016) analyze how Integrated Reporting (IR) adopters communicate
managerial aspects of corporate sustainability. Drawing on impression management analysis,
this study seeks to detect manipulations in this disclosure practice. A manual content analysis
of reports available on the IIRC website and a multivariate statistical analysis reveal that
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firms offer biased IR disclosures. Firms provide limited forward-looking and quantitative
disclosure of their actions to achieve sustainability outcomes and also avoid providing
information about their sustainability performance when their social and environmental
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results are poor. In conclusion, the authors explain the limited capability of the reporting
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proportion of non-executive directors). The results indicate that the extent of EMA
implementation is moderate and that more emphasis is placed on environmental cost
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effectiveness activities. The results also imply that for the analyzed Malaysian companies
complying with environmental regulations is more important than incorporating EMA
information into performance measurement, control and reporting.
Morioka and Carvalho (2016a this) investigate the incorporation of sustainability in corporate
performance measurement systems, towards a sustainability performance measurement
system. Their research seeks to explore the factors that affect the interaction between
sustainability indicators regarding their relative priority for decision-making and to
investigate how firms include sustainability indicators into their corporate performance
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measurement systems. To address these objectives, cross-sector case studies are conducted in
five firms located in Brazil. The results show four performance measurement systems that
encompass sustainability indicators: (a) periodic performance measurement system of a
specific area/department; (b) individual performance assessment; (c) sustainability reporting;
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and (d) project assessment. The paper provides a structured view of integrating sustainability
in a corporate performance measurement system, based on empirical evidence.
Based on a literature review of 261 papers, Morioka and Carvalho (b, this issue) develop a
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framework distinguishes three levels. The first represents the principles for corporate
sustainability to guide decision-making driven by collective values. The second level includes
core sustainability business elements, which are processes and practices, capabilities,
offerings and contributions to sustainable development. At the third level, the context factors
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represent the internal and external aspects that affect the previous levels.
Six papers emphasize the link between management & communication and performance
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the suggested frameworks reveal different interfaces that have so far not been considered well
in research.
Bouten and Hooze (2016) report the results of a creative safety campaign introduced by a
Belgian scaffolding firm to align employee behavior at different organizational levels. The
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main objective is to examine how a package of control systems (Malmi and Brown, 2008;
Malmi and Granlund, 2009) can enhance safety performance. More specifically, they show
how the firm's control package is configured at different organizational levels and how a
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Garcia et al. (2016) propose a model that helps corporate decision-making considering the
Triple Bottom Line framework and a stakeholder view. Multi-criteria decision aid methods
are used to generate a sustainability balanced single measure and performance indices. The
authors apply the model to a Brazilian electricity corporation where the indices are calculated
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from existing GRI indicators and the use of the model within the company's annual review of
the strategic plan. The findings suggest that the model has the potential to support informed
decisions and the integration of corporate sustainability performance measurement and
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performance management systems of an oil and gas company. A qualitative case study has
been used to identify the stages and means of integration in the organization, based on Gond
et al.'s (2012) framework. The findings revealed that although cognitive, organizational and
technical enablers moved integration of sustainability forward in the organization, certain
cognitive barriers considerably affected the attainment of full integration. Institutional
pressures provided the impetus for the development of enablers, giving rise to several
implications for governments, academics and other parties. The study shows that
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sustainability integration in performance management systems could lead to better
management and control of sustainability performance in organizations.
Based on a longitudinal study in a large Italian food co-operative, Battaglia et al. (2016)
analyze whether and how the development and the use of sustainability control systems have
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been able to promote the integration of sustainability within organizational strategy. The cooperative has implemented three main managerial instruments (sustainability reports,
sustainability annual plans and participatory social plans) which have been able to support
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enablers. However, strong cognitive (and organizational) barriers have gradually stifled the
cognitive enablers and have not enabled sustainability to be fixed into the organizational
strategy. As such, the integration process was marginalized over time, also due to the
negative economic performance of the co-operative. The paper shows that sustainability
integration remains a fragile concept even in a cooperative, despite the similarities between
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December 31st 2011 from 20 different countries (in Europe, North America, and Asia). The
findings confirm the existence of distinctions among the stakeholder dialogue realized by
companies in different national institutional contexts. Thus, it is suggested that stakeholder
dialogues should not be only seen as voluntary, but firms should recognize it as a necessary
managerial practice to build a broad continuous information base useful to align sustainability
performance and managerial systems to the institutional context where the company operates.
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With these innovative papers investigating different links between measurement,
management and communication for transparency and performance improvement purposes
and the identified challenge (Ferreira and Otley, 2009) to create a framework to systematize
linkage challenges Maas et al. (2016) developed an overview paper conceptualizing the
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different links and research potential. While still a lot of potential for productive research
exists, corporate practice is challenged to deal with the identified links in order to reduce
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This Special Volume aims to advance our knowledge about how to integrate sustainability
assessment, management accounting, management control, and reporting by nineteen stateof-the art and innovative papers. The papers in this Special Volume describe aspects of
integrating these concepts by using conceptual approaches, case studies, and/or qualitative
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analysis. The papers show the potential for strategic use of an integrative approach focusing
on transparency, performance improvement or both. The main message from across the
articles is that there is no one-size-fits-all approach and that we need creative, targeted and
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Editorial
Special Volume:
Integrating corporate sustainability performance measurement,
management control and reporting
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Karen Maas
Impact Centre Erasmus (ICE), Erasmus School of Accounting & Assurance, Erasmus
University Rotterdam, the Netherlands
Stefan Schaltegger
Centre for Sustainability Management (CSM), Leuphana University Lneburg, Germany
Nathalie Crutzen
Smart City Institute (SCI), HEC-Management School, University of Liege, Belgium
HIGHLIGHTS:
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