Sustainability has become a global focus as committed action is urgently demanded in the face of looming climate change, but also with respect to calls for globally valid social standards. Internationally harmonised reporting standards for companies will be critical factors for meeting all these sustainability targets. To ensure the associated reporting requirements meet with general acceptance, they will be based on scientific standards and provide companies with clarity, traceability and practical implementation as part of normal business operations.
This is also the goal of “Making Sustainability Transparent”, a research project currently in progress at the School of Management at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) Munich with funding from the TÜV SÜD Foundation. Professor Christian Hofmann, Director of the Institute of Accounting and Control at LMU Munich, is helming the project with his colleague, Professor Thorsten Sellhorn, from LMU Munich’s Institute for Accounting, Auditing and Analysis. Alongside other topics, the project collates the regulatory requirements for sustainability reporting, which are currently undergoing dynamic development and change, and captures relevant reporting practices of leading companies in a continuously updated and publicly accessible online database known as the “Sustainability Reporting Navigator”. The important project creates transparency.
