Abstract

Although sustainability reporting has shown significant advances in the past decade, research has not kept pacewith these developments. Very few studies looked how stakeholders perceive the importance of sustainabilityreporting and disclosure. This paper explored how users and preparers rated the importance of performanceindicators suggested by the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) Guidelines regarding the environmental, economicand social impacts of a company. It provides evidence on which GRI performance indicators are perceived asrelevant and important by both preparers and users. We found that users and preparers generally agree with therelevance and importance of all the performance indicators included in the GRI G3 guidelines. Despite a fewareas of statistical disagreement, the overall perceptions were similar between users versus preparers regardingthe importance of the GRI indicators. The convergence of the usefulness of GRI guidelines as viewed by the twoconflicting stakeholders of users and preparers suggests that the stage may be ready for rule-making bodies andgovernmental agencies to further promote sustainability reporting by mandating uniform standards in reportingand disclosure.

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