New Methods for Accounting Research of the Narrative Component of Sustainable Reporting: Challenges and Opportunities

Today, the Corporate Social Responsibility Reporting Directive (CSRD) defines the direction of accounting transformation. Its implementation is accompanied by the adoption of new ESRS standards, which establish more detailed and quantifiable reporting requirements, necessitating the development of methods capable of combining the analysis of financial indicators with the study of narratives. The purpose of the article is to analyze the methodological challenges and new opportunities for accounting science that have arisen as a result of the development of sustainability reporting with a predominant narrative component, as well as to justify the need to hybridize methodological tools and competencies of accounting researchers to study this new phenomenon effectively. The main emphasis in the study is on the "narrative turn" – the transition from traditional financial reporting to reporting with a predominant narrative component, which reveals the impact of the enterprise on ESG aspects. This change requires a fundamental rethinking of scientific research methodology in accounting. The study's results indicate that digitalizing reporting and using Big Data tools create new opportunities and risks associated with information overload for users and the need to verify the reliability of large volumes of narrative information. The article offers an overview of methods for analyzing accounting narratives of sustainability reporting (content analysis, natural language processing, linguistic techniques) necessary to assess their qualitative and quantitative parameters. The inevitability of hybridization of the competencies of accounting researchers and the expansion of the subject of accounting science through integration with sociology, linguistics, and communication theories was substantiated. According to the constitutive theory, accounting narratives of sustainability reporting confirm the understanding of accounting as a socio-economic institution and institutional practice. The analysis of the "narrative turn" implemented through the implementation of CSRD allowed for the identification of the challenges that need to be recognized, analyzed, and overcome by accounting researchers.