Scoring of sustainability reports with gri-g4 economic, environmental, and social performance indicators: A research on the companies preparing sustainability report in turkey

Abstract

Today, an increasing number of businesses are presenting their non-financial information as well as their financial information to their stakeholders through various reports. Sustainability reports are one of these reports. Sustainability reporting helps organizations to set a target, measure their performance and manage the change to make their activities more sustainable. “ Sustainability Reporting Guidelines” have been developed by Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), to reveal the sustainability performances of organizations in a systematic way along with the economic, social and environmental dimensions. In this study, the sustainability reports of 13 companies that have published sustainability report for the first time in Turkey in 2016 were analyzed by “content analysis method” within the framework of GRI-G4 reporting principles. The “sustainability reporting scoring model” created by Morhardt et al. (Corp Soc Responsib Environ Manag 9:215–233, 2002) based on GRI 2000 and ISO 14031 standards was used a model in the study. The model in question has been extended based on the GRI-G4 reporting guideline. In the study, a total of 91 indicators (9 economic, 34 environmental and 48 social performance) were scored between 0 and 3, and companies’ sustainability reporting scores were calculated. Because of the study, while Metro Wholesale Corporation was the company with the highest sustainability reporting score by 143 points, Boyplast Limited Company was the company with the lowest score by 18 points.