GLOBAL REPORTING INITIATIVE

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

What is sustainability? Why is it important today? Why should organizations make sustainability report? Answers on these and many other questions can be found in this report. It evaluates the whole phenomena of sustainability and its relevance to companies’ reports. Under the terms of global warming, high level of pollutions and decreasing amount of natural resources people have begun to care about future generations. So, today many companies include sustainability-related information in their annual reports. It is necessary to build trust relations between a company and its customers or shareholders because sustainability affects everyone living.

INTRODUCTION

In recent years, there was a growth in popularity in making sustainability reports among many companies. As companies enlarge activities which influence economy, society and environment, the aspect of CSR is increasing more and more. The reason for making sustainability reports is to respond to stakeholder expectations and interests. But the problem is that many businesses are not taking it seriously because they don't care about environment, society or they don't want to show every activities and actions they make. The purpose of this report is to identify reasons of sustainability being so important today, describe its major points and key features, to analyse necessity of making sustainability reports. Some of these points can be disclosed through sustainability report of Orica Ltd.

DEFINITION OF SUSTAINABILITY

Sustainability refers to the major issues: environmental, economic and social, that must all be coordinated and addressed to ensure the long term viability of our community and the planet. Jones and Jonas (2011, p. 65) claims that sustainability is closely connected with so called “triple bottom line". The TBL captures the main idea of sustainability by measuring the impact of an organization's activities on the world, including both profitability and shareholder values and its social, human and environmental capital. Goal of sustainability is to achieve such level of economy that human generations can continue existing. The philosophy of sustainability compare short-term economic benefits against long-term impacts on future generations (Jones & Jonas, 2011,p. 67)

GLOBAL REPORTING INITIATIVE

The Global Reporting Initiative is world's most widely used framework for making sustainability reports. Its guidelines provide structure of what should companies mention in their reports. According to Verschoort (2011,p. 13) guidelines include principles that not only define report content but also ensure its quality. Flynn (2009,p. 14) concluded that one of the major things is that such reports provide information for stakeholders. Stakeholders’ engagement process is valuable because it shows what points of CSR most matter to company's audience. According to GRI, a company should dialogue with its stakeholders to test the assumptions in which they are mostly interested.

Date: 2015-12-24; view: 616