Quality disclosure in sustainability reporting: evidence from universities

Attention towards sustainability reporting is very high with reference to higher education. The paper aims to assess the maturity level of sustainability reporting and to measure its quality by evaluating the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) indicators currently disclosed. The research was carried out using the inductive method. We delimited the study to universities and we evaluated the quality of sustainability reporting by analyzing the indicators disclosed in 2012 reports according to GRI guidelines. The research gives an overview of sustainability reporting in universities by evaluating the quality level of their disclosure. The results confirm previous research by highlighting the necessity to improve sustainability reporting. Moreover, the results show there are differences between universities that are connected to the peculiarities of each country. They also enable us to draw up an initial classification of universities. The paper provides one of the first in-depth studies of sustainability reporting quality for universities included in the GRI database.