IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/rpxmxx/v20y2018i1p201-223.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Sustainability reporting by local governments: a magic tool? Lessons on use and usefulness from European pioneers

Author

Listed:
  • Ludger Niemann
  • Thomas Hoppe

Abstract

A growing number of city governments worldwide engage in sustainability reporting, voluntarily and responding to legal pressures. Diverse practices emerged based on unique choices concerning formats, periodicity, authorship and dissemination efforts. Such design questions and associated outcomes are highly relevant for practitioners yet unaddressed in standard guidelines and most prior research that primarily concern content and conjectured reporting benefits. This article presents a framework suited to assessing real-life practices and outcomes. An exploratory evaluation in Amsterdam, Basel, Dublin, Freiburg, Nuremberg and Zurich suggests that sustainability reporting can benefit organizational change, management and communication yet also lead to ‘fatigue’ and discontinuation.

Suggested Citation

  • Ludger Niemann & Thomas Hoppe, 2018. "Sustainability reporting by local governments: a magic tool? Lessons on use and usefulness from European pioneers," Public Management Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 20(1), pages 201-223, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:rpxmxx:v:20:y:2018:i:1:p:201-223
    DOI: 10.1080/14719037.2017.1293149
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/14719037.2017.1293149
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/14719037.2017.1293149?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Tamara Guerrero-Gómez & Andrés Navarro-Galera & David Ortiz-Rodríguez, 2021. "Promoting Online Transparency to Help Achieve the Sustainable Development Goals: An Empirical Study of Local Governments in Latin America," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(4), pages 1-18, February.
    2. Ligorio, Lorenzo & Venturelli, Andrea & Caputo, Fabio, 2022. "Tracing the boundaries between sustainable cities and cities for sustainable development. An LDA analysis of management studies," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 176(C).
    3. Antonio Massarutto & Andrea Garlatti & Stefano Miani & Ernesto Cassetta & Silvia Iacuzzi, 2021. "Evaluating the performance of local SoEs as output‐maximizing entities: The case of Friuli Venezia Giulia," Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 92(2), pages 307-332, June.
    4. Monica Bruzzone & Renata Paola Dameri & Paola Demartini, 2021. "Resilience Reporting for Sustainable Development in Cities," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(14), pages 1-24, July.
    5. Ioana Dorin & Ioan Rosca & Dana Andreea Costea & Cornel Suciu, 2020. "Integrated Reporting for Public Sector in EU. A case study," Academic Journal of Economic Studies, Faculty of Finance, Banking and Accountancy Bucharest,"Dimitrie Cantemir" Christian University Bucharest, vol. 6(1), pages 121-126, March.
    6. Oluyomi A. Osobajo & Adekunle Oke & Ama Lawani & Temitope S. Omotayo & Nkeiruka Ndubuka-McCallum & Lovelin Obi, 2022. "Providing a Roadmap for Future Research Agenda: A Bibliometric Literature Review of Sustainability Performance Reporting (SPR)," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(14), pages 1-20, July.
    7. Nicola Andreij Rieg & Birgitta Gatersleben & Ian Christie, 2023. "Driving Change towards Sustainability in Public Bodies and Civil Society Organisations: Expert Interviews with UK Practitioners," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(10), pages 1-15, May.
    8. Chiba, Soumaya & Talbot, David & Boiral, Olivier, 2018. "Sustainability adrift: An evaluation of the credibility of sustainability information disclosed by public organizations," Accounting forum, Elsevier, vol. 42(4), pages 328-340.
    9. Stephen N. Hamilton & Richard D. Waters, 2022. "Mainstreaming Standardized Sustainability Reporting: Comparing Fortune 50 Corporations’ and U.S. News & World Report’s Top 50 Global Universities’ Sustainability Reports," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(6), pages 1-17, March.
    10. Niccol? Comerio & Patrizia Tettamanzi, 2019. "Systematic literature network analysis in accounting: A first application on integrated reporting research," FINANCIAL REPORTING, FrancoAngeli Editore, vol. 2019(2), pages 73-95.
    11. Feng Xiong & Xiaoyu Zeng & Yi (Fionna) Xie & Yan Li, 2022. "Design (Allocation) of a Carbon Emission System—A Lesson from Power Restrictions in Zhejiang, China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(19), pages 1-31, September.
    12. Francisco J. Alcaraz-Quiles & Andrés Navarro-Galera & David Ortiz-Rodríguez, 2020. "The contribution of the right to information laws in Europe to local government transparency on sustainability," International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 20(1), pages 161-178, March.
    13. Michela Magliacani, 2023. "How the sustainable development goals challenge public management. Action research on the cultural heritage of an Italian smart city," Journal of Management & Governance, Springer;Accademia Italiana di Economia Aziendale (AIDEA), vol. 27(3), pages 987-1015, September.
    14. Ludger Niemann & Thomas Hoppe, 2021. "How to Sustain Sustainability Monitoring in Cities: Lessons from 49 Community Indicator Initiatives across 10 Latin American Countries," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(9), pages 1-16, May.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:rpxmxx:v:20:y:2018:i:1:p:201-223. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/rpxm .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.