Stakeholder involvement in the third-party assurance on corporate sustainability reports
(2004)The International Institute for Industrial Environmental Economics
- Abstract
- Current practices of the third-party assurance on the corporate sustainability report have been badly criticized as they failed the expectations from stakeholders. Stakeholder involvement was suggested as one idea to close the expectation gap in the third-party assurance. Literature review, case studies in leading-edge reports and interviews with 28 Swedish reporting organizations and their assurance providers were carried out to see if stakeholder involvement in the assurance would be the solution to the problem. As a result, ten cases identified from 50 leading-edge reports as stakeholder involvement cases. The cases demonstrated that the stakeholder involvement would have a potential to make the assurance function as accountability... (More)
- Current practices of the third-party assurance on the corporate sustainability report have been badly criticized as they failed the expectations from stakeholders. Stakeholder involvement was suggested as one idea to close the expectation gap in the third-party assurance. Literature review, case studies in leading-edge reports and interviews with 28 Swedish reporting organizations and their assurance providers were carried out to see if stakeholder involvement in the assurance would be the solution to the problem. As a result, ten cases identified from 50 leading-edge reports as stakeholder involvement cases. The cases demonstrated that the stakeholder involvement would have a potential to make the assurance function as accountability process, although in a few cases the role of stakeholders was confined as an alternative source of information for the assurance provider. It was found from the interviews that companies had a great interest in internal benefits from the third-party assurance, although only 32% of the companies interviewed had the third-party assurance last year. Half of interviewees could see the value of stakeholder involvement in the assurance, although they did not anticipate any radical change in the power structure governing the assurance exercise. This study, therefore, concludes that stakeholder involvement in the assurance would not happen extensively enough to close the gaps in the third-party assurance under the current setting. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
http://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/1329269
- author
- Park, Jeehye
- supervisor
- organization
- year
- 2004
- type
- H1 - Master's Degree (One Year)
- subject
- keywords
- third-party assurance, stakeholder involvement, expectation gap, corporate sustainability report accountability, Environmental studies, Miljöstudier
- language
- English
- id
- 1329269
- date added to LUP
- 2006-09-07 00:00:00
- date last changed
- 2006-09-07 00:00:00
@misc{1329269,
abstract = {{Current practices of the third-party assurance on the corporate sustainability report have been badly criticized as they failed the expectations from stakeholders. Stakeholder involvement was suggested as one idea to close the expectation gap in the third-party assurance. Literature review, case studies in leading-edge reports and interviews with 28 Swedish reporting organizations and their assurance providers were carried out to see if stakeholder involvement in the assurance would be the solution to the problem. As a result, ten cases identified from 50 leading-edge reports as stakeholder involvement cases. The cases demonstrated that the stakeholder involvement would have a potential to make the assurance function as accountability process, although in a few cases the role of stakeholders was confined as an alternative source of information for the assurance provider. It was found from the interviews that companies had a great interest in internal benefits from the third-party assurance, although only 32% of the companies interviewed had the third-party assurance last year. Half of interviewees could see the value of stakeholder involvement in the assurance, although they did not anticipate any radical change in the power structure governing the assurance exercise. This study, therefore, concludes that stakeholder involvement in the assurance would not happen extensively enough to close the gaps in the third-party assurance under the current setting.}},
author = {{Park, Jeehye}},
language = {{eng}},
note = {{Student Paper}},
title = {{Stakeholder involvement in the third-party assurance on corporate sustainability reports}},
year = {{2004}},
}