The development and implementation of GRI Standards: practice and policy issues

Carol Adams, Abdullah M. Alhamood and Xinwu He

Chapter 3 in Handbook of Accounting and Sustainability, 2022, pp 26-43 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: This chapter discusses the development of GRI Standards and reviews recent research on practice and policy issues concerning their implementation. Six themes emerged in the literature published between 2010 and 2021: applicability of GRI Standards; nature of adoption of GRI Standards by report preparers; materiality assessment in GRI reporting; the level of understanding of GRI Standards; the voluntary status of GRI Standards and the need for mandatory reporting; and the quality of assurance. Research suggests that GRI Standards enhance: the comparability of sustainability reporting; the amount of information available on matters of concern to stakeholders; the identification of material issues; and the context relevance of information. However, the voluntary nature of GRI Standards means that firms tend to strategically disclose sustainability information to manage corporate reputation, therefore some firms fail to be accountable for material negative impacts. Researchers call for making GRI Standards mandatory and increasing the scope and uptake of external assurance. The chapter highlights areas for further research.

Keywords: Business and Management; Economics and Finance; Environment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.elgaronline.com/view/edcoll/9781800373501/9781800373501.00009.xml (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:elg:eechap:20089_3

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.e-elgar.com

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Chapters from Edward Elgar Publishing
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Darrel McCalla ().