A flexible approach for web-based, personalised sustainability reporting

Sustainability reporting is a form of corporate reporting that aims to give a comprehensive overview of a company’s performance, aimed at all stakeholders. While this provides various benefits like central information access, comparability etc, there are also disadvantages involved. This is due to the fact, that the techniques used for sustainability reporting still do not reflect the possibilities of web based communication systems. Using these potentials, a company can provide a target oriented, flexible reporting that provides tailored reports for the informational needs of every related stakeholder. In this paper, the current situation is analysed and a software system is presented that utilises web based systems to allow a flexible, efficient and stakeholder oriented sustainability reporting. 1 Sustainability reports as a presentation medium for a company’s performance Binding stakeholders to a company has always been of great importance, but with the vastly increased flow of information and possibilities of modern web-based data systems, providing positive information about a company is of much higher importance than ever before. Stakeholders and especially customers are able to get an impression of a company very fast and may even share their experiences with other persons over the web. Thus, not only the presentation of financial performance is important, but also the communication of environmental, social, and other relevant aspects. One possibility to provide this data is using sustainability reports, as they combine content of many different areas and thus may reach a potentially very high stakeholder base.