Sustainability Accounting: Upgrading Corporate Social Responsibility

The new challenge of corporate social responsibility (CSR) is how to be more accountable towards stakeholders. Accountability is a duty to provide information to stakeholders who have a right to it and is closely linked with notions of corporate social responsibility. The objective of sustainability accounting is the preparation of accounts concerning organisations’ interactions with society and the natural environment. Sustainability accounting is a framework that can be used to reflect economic, social and environmental impact and demonstrate how they are connected. In practice, however, it is difficult to put together policies that simultaneously promote economic, environmental and social goals. Therefore, different international associations and initiatives have developed frameworks to provide standards and guidance for sustainability reporting (e. g., GRI, UN Global Compact, OECD Guidelines, ISO 26000). Moreover, the European Commission and the European Council expanded the European Union accounting legislation framework to increase the transparency of EU companies and their performance on environmental and social matters, and, therefore, to contribute effectively to long-term economic growth and employment. The new EU Directive 2014/95/EU includes disclosure of non-financial and diversity information by certain large undertakings and groups for harmonisation of current reporting practices. A significant contribution to the harmonization of current sustainability reporting practices is provided by the Sustainable Stock Exchanges (SSE) initiative, which brings together exchangers, policy makers and other key stakeholders in accordance with expected UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The aim of this chapter is to present the opportunities and challenges of sustainability accounting, which provide information about the achieved level of corporate social responsibility (CSR).