Abstract/Summary

Over the last two decades, an escalating sense of urgency has emerged to address critical sustainability issues driven by the global imperative of sustainable development. This urgency has prompted governments, standard setters, and influential international organisations to introduce numerous policy measures focused on corporate sustainability performance and reporting. However, the plethora of sustainability institutions and standards has led to a fragmented landscape, causing confusion, complexities, and raising serious doubts about the credibility and accurate accountability of companies’ sustainability behaviour and disclosure. Thus, this research seeks to investigate the actions and behaviours, including associated challenges and limitations, stemming from the proliferation of sustainability institutions and frameworks, and their impact on organisations’ sustainability reporting and accountability. This PhD thesis consists of three empirical papers that employ qualitative approach and utilise the arena framework and institutional theory as its research design. The first paper investigates the proliferation of sustainability institutions and their strategies, including the challenges they pose for establishing a unified sustainability reporting system. The findings show that the actions and behaviour of these institutions’ actors are premeditated and strategically calculated to uphold their influence and defend their technical authority. This suggests that the harmonisation of sustainability reporting regulation remains a distant goal. The second paper focuses on monitoring and analysing the actions and measures taken within the European sustainability arena, with a specific emphasis on the behaviour of emerging standard setters and their impact on developing single global standards for sustainable development. The study reveals that the influence of the new standard setters, particularly the IFRS Foundation arises from continuous pressure and interest from their audience, and their behaviour is aimed to redirect sustainability regulations towards their audience’s preferences and centralise control away from a multi-stakeholder process and sustainable development. The third paper investigates the contentious issues concerning materiality judgement and the materiality assessment process within sustainability standard-setting bodies, and their implications on sustainability impact disclosure and accountability for UK-FTSE100 index companies. The findings contrast the existing assumption that the materiality of sustainability information and its recognition is stakeholder-dependent, and that stakeholder engagement improves disclosure. Further, the paper also highlights a risk of ‘tokenistic engagement’, where companies merely seek to fulfil the appearance of inclusivity without truly incorporating stakeholders’ views into their materiality assessments final decisions. Overall, this study makes significant contribution to the literature by providing critical perspective to the understanding of how external actors behave and the complexities and manipulations present within the sustainability reporting arena. Further, this thesis represents an unprecedented endeavour, delving deeply into the institutions shaping the identification, measurement, and disclosure of ESG impacts. Additionally, it unravels how the actions of institutional actors influences sustainability report preparers’ judgement on materiality assessment process and accountability.