Impact Factors on Sustainability Reporting

Abstract

Sustainability reporting is a mostly voluntary activity that has gained great following in academia and the corporate world since the turn of the millennium. Sustainability reporting enables organizations to consider the impacts of a wide range of sustainability issues, enabling them to be more transparent about the risks and opportunities they face. In spite of standardization efforts, sustainability reports still differ regarding the scope, contents, quality and quantity, and completeness, and differences in sustainability reports have been the subject of prior research. The investigated relationships are inconsistent and incomplete without consideration of other impact factors rather than company characteristics like country-specific factors or internal factors. In order to widen the viewpoint, we would like to make a contribution by first showing which impact factors have been investigated in order to highlight the need for further research. The second part summarizes the main results of a study that investigated country-specific and internal factors.