How to strengthen corporate accountability: the case for unlocking sustainable corporate performance through mandatory corporate reporting

A joint report by GRI and the World Benchmarking Alliance

The world is now at the halfway point on the path to achieving the SDGs, and yet we are still collectively off track with most of the goals and targets. Similarly, we are not on course to achieve the Paris Agreement goal of keeping the world below the crucial 1.5 °C temperature increase. Governments remain responsible for driving action to accelerate the transformation, but they need the full cooperation of business to succeed. Herein lies the problem: the world is currently lacking enforcement mechanisms that are effective in holding the most influential companies accountable for their contribution to the collective sustainability goals. As a result, the sustainability performance of a company and its contribution to sustainable development today are not sufficiently consequential.

To contribute to this ongoing discussion on corporate accountability, GRI and World Benchmarking Alliance (WBA) published a joint report exploring the pivotal role of corporate sustainability reporting in advancing sustainable development agendas and fostering corporate accountability.

The main findings of this report are:

• There is compelling evidence of a positive correlation between companies publishing a GRI content index and their scores in WBA’s Social Benchmark.
• Companies that publish a GRI content index typically achieve CSI scores that are at least 47% higher than their counterparts.
• Moreover, companies demonstrating strict adherence to the GRI Standards tend to score higher than those who only partially comply with the requirements.
• The positive correlation is reinforced by the fact that the vast majority of companies scoring zero on WBA’s core social indicators do not publish a GRI content index.
• The majority of companies with high CSI scores use GRI Standards, while others adhere to different reporting frameworks. This association indicates that compliance with established reporting standards generally correlates with enhanced social sustainability performance
• This report calls on UN Member States to build on this positive correlation between corporate sustainability reporting and company sustainability performance, and mainstream mandatory reporting.