Corporate social responsibility reporting platforms: enabling transparency for accountability
This paper presents a theoretical model of corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting from an information processing perspective. It begins with a brief literature review of CSR, sustainable consumption, socially responsible investment, and sustainability reporting, followed by a summary of the reporting process in the context of the Global Reporting Index and the industry that has grown up around it. We begin model development by clarifying the sub-dimensional structure of organizational transparency in terms of IT capability and transparency culture, and distinguishing transparency from sustainability. We then dimensionalize the CSR report itself, and identify design characteristics of the reporting platform that support these dimensions. Following this, we discuss believability of the data relative to the needs of different constituents, primarily investors and ethical consumers. We then discuss the implications of the theoretical model and the future research streams it identifies. We close with a discussion of how reporting platforms can be designed with particular data users in mind, and describe the challenges of designing for the needs of ethical consumers.
corporate social responsibility sustainable consumption socially responsible investment sustainability reporting social reporting ethical consumption platform design