Integrated Sustainability Reporting: Linking Environmental and Social Information to Value Creation Processes

This book proposes an integrated approach to sustainability reporting to overcome some limitations of the well-established additive approach, where the reporting of environmental, social and economic issues is sequential, but separate. We consider that to successfully communicate its serious engagement to sustainability, a company should report how environmental and social issues impact on its way of doing business, namely on its business model, contributing to value creation. Thus, a reporting framework for business model that encompasses sustainability is presented. Some illustrative examples are examined to show how business model reporting could be opportunely used to provide an effective integrated sustainability reporting. The book also offers a broad and inclusive analysis of corporate sustainability reporting, which includes a discussion of the theoretical background explaining the reasons why companies provide sustainability reporting, a depiction of the current regulatory framework for sustainability disclosure, and a review of sustainability reporting literature that shows the main characteristics of sustainability disclosure practices. The book will be of interest to all researchers and practitioners working for companies or organizations that aim to support, implement and improve their sustainability reporting, by adopting a more integrated approach that interconnects environmental and social aspects with the economic and financial results by means of the business model. The book also offers a valuable reference guide for social science researchers, including PhD students, interested in an academic volume discussing the latest literature on sustainability, corporate social responsibility, and the communication of business models.