ECENT YEARS HAVE WITNESSED A STEADY GROWTH IN THE NUMBER OF COMPANIES REPORTING
publicly on various aspects of their environmental and social performance. Increasingly, as KPMG's two most recent (2002, 2005) triennial international surveys highlight, the term 'sustainability reporting' is being employed to describe this practice, as a social (and economic) dimension is introduced into reports in addition to the longer standing environmental focus.
A major concern on the part of those promoting the practice of sustainability reporting, particularly the ever-expanding CSR consultancy industry, has been to establish the 'business case' for its adoption. Significantly, issues of accountability and transparency are being seamlessly intertwined with those of risk management, reputation enhancement and the pursuit of shareholder value. Sadly, consultant hype and corporate spin appear to have increasingly displaced in depth analysis of the processes and impacts of sustainability reporting, particularly its efficacy in providing a means of enhancing accountability. The papers in this special issue are offered as an initial attempt to correct such a perceived imbalance and to promote informed debate.
The first paper, by Tregidga and Milne, presents an all too rare longitudinal case study of reports issued over a 10 year period by a leading New Zealand reporter, the water utility Watercare Services Ltd. The interpretive textual analysis employed suggests that, despite the increasing sophistication of the company's reporting practices, its later reports can be viewed as largely regressive. This is because they are constrained to a perspective of resource management, or ecological modernization, in an attempt to make the concept of sustainability appear compatible with a 'business as usual' scenario.
The following paper, by Lawrence, Collins, Pavlovich and Arunachalam, also set in a New Zealand context, addresses the relatively unexplored area of the sustainability practices of SMEs. The authors are particularly concerned to explore the potential for linking individual firm activities to sustainability through employment of a communitarian model of accountability. Intriguingly, this model offers a clear alternative to the more commonly employed one of economics based agency theory, and suggests that debate over the optimal level of community involvement in small enterprise decision making may have more to offer in terms of promoting accountability than the promotion of external reporting practice.