Gri Sustainability Reporting Guidelines For Public And Third Sector Organizations

Abstract

This article provides a critique of the Global Reporting Initiatives (GRI) guidelines, sustainability reporting (SR) guidelines and also examines their applicability to public and third sector organizations. The article finds that these guidelines promote a ‘managerialist’ approach to sustainability rather than an ecological and eco-justice informed approach, potentially causing them to fall into an evaluatory trap. This means that they do not contribute to sustainability. Since public and third sector organizations have yet to take up SR with the same fervour as the private sector, the opportunity exists to learn from the critique of the use of the GRI reports in practice. As such this article examines the implications of this finding for public and third sector organizations. A conclusion is that there is an opportunity for the GRI to develop guidelines further in line with existing practice to increase their relevance and utility.

Keywords:

• Critique
• GRI
• public sector
• SR guidelines
• sustainability reporting
• third sector

Acknowledgement

Thanks to the participants and reviewers from the SMOG2009 and CSEAR2009 conferences for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this article. Thanks also to Fiona Crawford and Julz Stevens for their editorial assistance.

Notes

1 ‘Greenwashing’ occurs when organizations report only overly positive views of their ‘green’ activities (Hubbard 2009).

2 ‘“Food miles” is a very simplistic concept relating to the distance food travels as a measure of its impact on the environment’ (Saunders et al. 2006: 93).

3 L'Agenzia per le ONLUS is a public agency. It is a network of experts as well as practitioners, established in 2002.

4 Originally from: The World Commission on Environment and Development (1987: 43), see Our Common Future, Oxford, Oxford University Press.

5 http://www.forumforthefuture.org/ (accessed 10 May 2009).