The Challenges of Accounting and the Role of Social Pressure in Sustainability Reporting

A Reflection from the Main Trends

Abstract

The most recent reporting proposals tend to consider information that is not eminently financial. A trend that has been encouraged since the awareness that the decision-making process should take into consideration environmental, social, and corporate governance factors and that has been helping companies internalize that their responsibilities to society go beyond their economic and legal obligations. A trend that would eventually lead different organizations to work hard to offer regulations capable of guiding the process of preparing and disclosing the required information, but which, by becoming mandatory only for certain types of companies, would end up including mostly voluntary reporting practices and with an information capacity clearly below expectations. It is in this context that this study is developed, with the main purpose of presenting a reflection on the main reporting trends, although particularly focused on corporate sustainability reporting, to identify challenges and the role that accounting and social pressure may be called upon to play. The results point to a low adherence and to the non-consolidation of the different proposals that have emerged, presenting the option for non-binding reporting practice as the main justification for the main criticisms and for the fact that, so far, a fully instituted reporting model has not been achieved at this level. Also allow us to anticipate that the main difficulty has to do with the little attention and concern that companies have dedicated to these matters, which will only be overcome as the market judge’s corporate performance at this level, benefiting investments with economically favorable expectations once their environmental and social impacts are weighed.