Sustainability Reporting Process: Benefits, Limits And Achievments

It’s universally accepted that the private sector is playing a great role in the modern society, contributing to the economic development of the community it serves. More than that, companies have a strong influence on the life of their consumers, their suppliers, their employees and on the communities in which they operate. Business organizations have a powerful impact on society’s well-being through the working conditions they are offering, training provided to employees, health coverage, payroll and taxes paid to local authorities, quality of the products and services provided to the population, environmental impact of their activity and so on. In brief, apart from the economic outcome and the spill over effect of their activity, they also have an environmental and social footprint. Nowadays, many companies are aiming to achieve economic performances while placing greater emphasis on social and environmental objectives, turning into sustainable companies. The first steps have been made by the biggest corporations in the world who started to report on their performance in terms of sustainability, mainly due to the pressure exerted by the society, by the governments, by the investors and NGOs. They are focusing on sustainability as a mean of creating value for shareholders and managing the interests of other stakeholders, including employees, suppliers, governments, creditors and societies at large. Their purpose evolved and it’s not just ensuring long term profitability and competitive advantage but also to contribute to the well-being of the society, the planet, and its inhabitants. The active engagement of corporations is essential if the world wants to achieve changes that are required in order to align the planet on the path of sustainability. But how can we know if it’s true and how can their performance be measured and evaluated? In this paper we aim to emphasize the role of measuring sustainable performances of the company and mandatory reporting and audit. Our purpose is to identify the global reporting trends for sustainability performance for the largest companies in the world and also to identify the limits of current reporting process. Another objective is to determine the Romanians reporting rate according to GRI Standards compared to other countries from the south-east Europe