The Global Reporting Initiative: do application levels matter?
ISSN: 1747-1117
Article publication date: 19 September 2018
Issue publication date: 4 October 2018
Abstract
Purpose
Widespread adoption of reporting frameworks has contributed to current global practices undertaken by firms to report social, environmental and economic impact. The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), the most widely used of those frameworks, has produced several generations of guidelines. Their third-generation guidelines (G3), which had the most widespread and long-term use, relied on a series of application levels to convey the quantity and quality of disclosures. The firm’s choice of application level exemplified its corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure strategy. The purpose of this study is to answer the call of scholars for a comprehensive explanation of a firm’s CSR disclosure strategy and suggested researching of the conceptual underpinnings of legitimacy, stakeholder, resource dependence and institutional theories.
Design/methodology/approach
Given this call, a comprehensive model is tested that explores relationships arising from these four major theories and the choice of GRI application levels. The model includes four constructs: non-financial corporate characteristics, firm financial performance, stakeholder involvement and environmental turbulence.
Findings
Unexpectedly, the findings do not show differences with respect to the theoretical underpinnings of CSR disclosure and the GRI disclosure levels.
Originality/value
Despite their widespread use, GRI was concerned that the G3’s application levels could be misunderstood and that the framework needed conceptual improvement. These concerns led to the elimination of application levels with the launch of GRI’s fourth-generation guidelines (G4) in 2013. The findings support the need for conceptual improvement and the discontinuation of the application level system in the G4 guidelines. They also suggest the need for additional research to examine disclosure choices over time, to make understand corporate disclosure strategies.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
Compliance with Ethical Standards
Funding: This study was not funded by any outside source.All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.
Informed consent: Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.
Citation
Simmons Jr, J.M., Crittenden, V.L. and Schlegelmilch, B.B. (2018), "The Global Reporting Initiative: do application levels matter?", Social Responsibility Journal, Vol. 14 No. 3, pp. 527-541. https://doi.org/10.1108/SRJ-12-2016-0218
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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