Current Trends in Sustainability Reporting: Analysing the Expansion of Regulatory Frameworks

Abstract

Sustainability reporting is a topical matter that organizations are dealing with, and it is expected to broaden in the future with new sustainability standards. To understand changes happening in the area, it is meaningful to understand the development of sustainability reporting. The shifts in trends and the changes happening have been a central topic in research, especially over the past years. This makes for a meaningful literature review. Deeper understanding of sustainability reporting is of high value as the future regulatory changes are to come.

Analyzing the evolvement of sustainability reporting provides insights on areas that future regulations are aiming to fulfil. The objective of this thesis is to highlight these areas and provide analysis on strengths and weaknesses of current regulations. Additionally aiming to analyse the direction that sustainability reporting is evolving towards, through findings from current literature. The analysis is conducted from a European point of view since major changes are happening in the European Union, leading the expansion of mandatory regulatory frameworks regarding sustainability reporting.

The broadening of sustainability reporting can be summarized to the aim of covering all sustainability-related issues in reporting, shifting the focus from just environmental issues to an expanded area of topics. As sustainability reporting broadens its topics, it continues to interlink sustainability issues to financial reporting even more, making it one of the biggest changes to have happened in the field of accounting.