Adam Smith Business School

Professor Indrit Troshani, University of Adelaide and Dr Nick Rowbottom, University of Birmingham

"Corporate sustainability reporting and information infrastructure"
Wednesday, 29 November. 9:00 am
Online seminar

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Abstract

Purpose: Information infrastructures can enable or constrain how companies pursue their visions of sustainability reporting and help address the urgent need to understand how corporate activity affects sustainability outcomes and how socio-ecological challenges affect corporate activity. We examine the relationship between sustainability reporting information infrastructures and sustainability reporting practice.

Design/methodology/approach: We mobilise a sociotechnical perspective and the conception of infrastructure, the socio-technical arrangement of technical artifacts and social routines, to engage with a qualitative dataset comprised of interview and documentary evidence on the development and use of sustainability reporting information infrastructures.

Findings: We detail how sustainability reporting information infrastructures are used by companies and depict the difficulties faced in generating reliable sustainability data. We illustrate the challenges and measures undertaken by entities to embed automation and integration, and to enhance sustainability data quality. The findings provide insight into how infrastructures constrain and support sustainability reporting practices.

Originality/value: We provide a nuanced account explaining how information infrastructures shape sustainability reporting practices, and how infrastructures are shaped by regulatory demands and costs. Responding to regulation, companies have developed ‘uneven’ information infrastructures with mature artifacts and routines supporting legislative requirements, whilst infrastructures supporting non-legislative sustainability reporting remain comparatively underdeveloped. Consequently, infrastructures supporting specific legislation have developed along unitary pathways and are often poorly integrated with infrastructures supporting other sustainability reporting areas. Infrastructures developed around legislative requirements are not necessarily constrained by financial reporting norms and therefore do not preclude specific visions of sustainability reporting. On the contrary, due to regulation, information infrastructure supporting ‘inside out’ impact materiality reporting is often comparatively well developed.

Bio

Indrit Troshani is a Professor of Accounting Systems and Data Analytics. Indrit's research looks at digital transformation in accounting, specifically focusing on corporate reporting infrastructures including digital corporate reporting and XBRL technology. His research has been published in many academic journals including Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, Accounting & Business Research, Accounting, Organizations & Society and Accounting & Finance. Indrit is the Associate Editor for three Accounting/Information Systems journals and has recently been invited to edit, as joint guest editor, a special issue for Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal (ABDC A*) on digital technology and corporate reporting.

Nick Rowbottom's research focuses on how extensions and innovations in the corporate reporting are shaped, constructed and implemented, with a particular interest in how notions of 'sustainability' are reflected in organisational measures of 'success' and the medium by which corporate reporting information is conveyed to users.

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For further information, please contact business-school-research@glasgow.ac.uk

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First published: 3 October 2023