The Professionalisation of Environmental and Social Reporting — What has it Achieved?

The recent development of environmental and social reporting has been dominated by what can be termed a ‘professional’ model, which has been greatly influenced by accountancy. The central features of this model have been the annual financial report and accounts as exemplar, voluntarism in whether and how to report by organisations, and trying to ensure information quality through third party auditing and verification. However, current debates indicate that this model has a number of weaknesses, and as a generalisation is not providing stakeholders with what they want. The paper suggests an alternative model, based on more carefully defined reporting of a smaller number of indicators, with a greater regulatory involvement in ensuring information quality and a greater emphasis on third party assessment of actual performance rather than internal processes.