The Regulation of Corporate Environmental Reporting
Corporate environmental reporting should be regulated. Discuss
Early documents (EC, 2001, p. 8) describe CSR as: a concept whereby companies integrate social and environmental concerns in their business operations and in their interaction with their stakeholders on a voluntary basis. There are some companies which currently publicly disclose their environmental performance information, comparable to financial performance information which is mandatory and required by accounting standards around the world. The point has been made that unlike financial performance, environmental performance reporting is a voluntary compliance rather than a mandatory one and that the authenticity of a company’s true social impact is establishing itself....... and that these companies will employ socially responsible activity without any regulatory requirements. (Aras & Crowther, 2008, p. 10) It will be discussed whether companies will have to become more responsible for their affect on the external environment with mandatory compliance and regulation or whether it simply will make no difference.
There is a belief which stands behind the assumption that having a regulatory body for mandatory environmental reporting may not actually be favourable to companies, stakeholders and/or the environment. Established regulation will not increase company’s accountability for the external environmental impact they are currently causing, as it has been documented that even if the information is provided, very little action was taken upon stakeholders & the readers of the environmental reporting for the companies to feel the effects, as these parties did not request the information now available nor did they bother to read the green accounts from the sole opinion that they had very little confidence in the information provided to them. (Holgaard and JØrgensen, 2005, p. 363)
Even if this voluntary reporting of social and environmental information via the OFR proposals was made mandatory and
Early documents (EC, 2001, p. 8) describe CSR as: a concept whereby companies integrate social and environmental concerns in their business operations and in their interaction with their stakeholders on a voluntary basis. There are some companies which currently publicly disclose their environmental performance information, comparable to financial performance information which is mandatory and required by accounting standards around the world. The point has been made that unlike financial performance, environmental performance reporting is a voluntary compliance rather than a mandatory one and that the authenticity of a company’s true social impact is establishing itself....... and that these companies will employ socially responsible activity without any regulatory requirements. (Aras & Crowther, 2008, p. 10) It will be discussed whether companies will have to become more responsible for their affect on the external environment with mandatory compliance and regulation or whether it simply will make no difference.
There is a belief which stands behind the assumption that having a regulatory body for mandatory environmental reporting may not actually be favourable to companies, stakeholders and/or the environment. Established regulation will not increase company’s accountability for the external environmental impact they are currently causing, as it has been documented that even if the information is provided, very little action was taken upon stakeholders & the readers of the environmental reporting for the companies to feel the effects, as these parties did not request the information now available nor did they bother to read the green accounts from the sole opinion that they had very little confidence in the information provided to them. (Holgaard and JØrgensen, 2005, p. 363)
Even if this voluntary reporting of social and environmental information via the OFR proposals was made mandatory and
References: EC (2001), Green Paper – Promoting a European Framework for Corporate Social Responsibility, COM (2001) 366 final, European Commission, Brussels. Aras, G. and Crowther, D. (2007c), “The development of corporate social responsibility”, Effective Executive, Vol. X No. 9, pp. 18-21. Aras, G and Crowther, D 2008, ‘Developing sustainable reporting standards’, Journal of Applied Accounting Research, vol. 9, no. 1, pp. 4-16. Cooper, S M and Owen, D L 2007, ‘Corporate social reporting and stakeholder accountability: The Missing Link’, Accounting Organizations and Society, vol. 32, pp. 649-667. Holgaard, J E and JØrgensen, T H 2005, ‘A Decade of Mandatory Environmental Reporting in Denmark’ European Environment, vol. 15, pp. 362-373. Parkinson, J. (2003). Disclosure and corporate social and environmental performance: competitiveness and enterprise in a broader social frame. Journal of Corporate Law Studies, 3(1), 3 39. Williamson, J (1997). Your stake at work: the TUC’s agenda In G. Kelly, D. Kelly, & A. Gamble (Eds.), Stakeholder capitalism. Macmillan: Basingstoke.