Published Paper Details:

As voluntary sustainability reporting has become an increasingly common practice among large corporations, the question arises as to whether or not such reporting should remain strictly voluntary, or should be mandated by regulators or stock exchanges. A number of governments have already made broad based sustainability reporting essentially mandatory. Sustainability reporting enables organizations of all shapes and sizes, including companies and public agencies, to measure, manage and publicly disclose their economic, environmental and social performance. The content of sustain ability reports focus more on complying to the reporting guidelines requirements rather than elaborating on materiality, stakeholder engagement and future plans and targets. Although, problem regarding reporting practices is widely accepted; it is equally widely accepted that the impact of corporate activity upon society and its citizens as well as all stakeholders including the environment is considerable and has an impact not just upon the present but also upon the future. Sustainability disclosure tracks, and allows for improvement on, those issues most tied to a corporation's environmental and social impact and most material to a company's financial performance. The concept of integrated reporting, which has been evolving over the last year, underlines the importance of demonstrating independence between strategy, governance, operation and financial and non-financial performance. India's business and investment Communities are beginning to recognise the benefits of sustainability reporting and organisational transparency. Involvement and ownership by top management, the management structure that formulates strategies and runs the operation of the company is a critical part of the sustainability process, given their ability to effect changes and to develop a long term vision and goals for the organisation. This strong growth in voluntary sustainability reporting suggests that both corporations and their stakeholders find value in the publication of this data. However, we believe that without mandatory reporting, the crucial task of transforming sustainability reporting into actual improvements in sustainability performance will remain an especially difficult task.