Melanie Lubinger, Judith Frei, Dorothea Greiling,
"Assessing the materiality of university G4-sustainability reports"
, in Journal of Public Budgeting, Accounting and Financial Management, Vol. 31, Nummer 3, Emerald, Seite(n) 364-391, 9-2019, ISSN: 1096-3367
Original Titel:
Assessing the materiality of university G4-sustainability reports
Sprache des Titels:
Englisch
Original Kurzfassung:
Purpose ? Materiality, as a content-selection principle, is an emerging trend in sustainability reporting for
making sustainability reports (SRs) more relevant for stakeholders. The purpose of this paper is to investigate
whether materiality matters in the reporting practice of universities which have adopted the Global Reporting
Initiative G4 Guidelines.
Design/methodology/approach ? Strategic stakeholder theory and sociological institutionalism serve for
deriving conflicting expectations about the compliance of universities with the materiality principle. In the
empirical section of this paper, content analyses are conducted on the documented material aspects, followed
by a correlation analysis for examining to which extent the identified material aspects are reported in the SRs.
Findings ? Although universities document G4-19 stakeholder-material aspects according to different
relevance levels and for internal and external stakeholder groups, the identified material aspects are not
appropriately reported in the SRs. The adoption of the materiality principle is a superficial one and therefore
more in line with the expectations of sociological institutionalism.
Research limitations/implications ? The main limitation for this study is the small number of university
SRs available. The chance to make SRs more relevant by focusing on stakeholder-material aspects is not used.
Originality/value ? This paper reports the first study looking at the compliance between the documented
material aspects and the content of SRs in a particular challenging organisational field, the university sector.
This paper also adds to the emerging theoretical discussion about the extent universities implement
materiality in SRs.
Keywords Materiality, University, Global reporting initiative, Sustainability report,
Sociological institutionalism, Strategic stakeholder theory
Paper type Research paper
Sprache der Kurzfassung:
Englisch
Journal:
Journal of Public Budgeting, Accounting and Financial Management