Cobertura por parte de las Administraciones públicas de los costes de

As described in section 3.3, 85 sustainability reporting assurance statements were assessed in Phase 2 of this research, using a content analysis technique, that followed O’Dwyer & Owen's (2005) and Perego & Kolk's (2012) approach in order to identify the current quality among companies listed on NZX in 2013.

Similar to the findings of Perego & Kolk (2012) this research shows an improvement in the quality of the sustainability reporting assurance statements reviewed over the research period, as shown in Figure 6.2. In the first and the last year of the research period, the average quality scores were 18.67 and 28.67, respectively. However, a comparison between the total average quality score (26.12) and the maximum score, based on the designed codebook (40) – see Appendix A.4 – suggested considerable room for further improvements in the quality of the sustainability reporting assurance statements.

Thus, consultants are not only the dominant providers, but also they are the providers of the highest quality assurance statements among the listed companies on NZX in 2013.

Apart from one statement by an individual assurer, who was considered to be an outlier, a very similar result was obtained from the other three main types of assurers. This result revealed that the quality of sustainability reporting assurance statements among the NZX-listed companies reviewed was not influenced by the type of assurer (accounting or non-accounting specialist). However, the quality of the assurance statements specifically depends on individual assurers within each assurer type (category). For example, both the maximum (39 out of 40) and the minimum (13 out of 40) quality scores were achieved within the consultant category. This research result was consistent with Ackers (2015), who indicated that the assurer’s type was not a factor in addressing the quality and level of reliance that users placed on different assurance statements. In contrast, Perego & Kolk (2012), Seguí- Mas et al. (2015) and Zorio et al. (2013) discovered that the quality of assurance statements was substantially affected by the type of assurance provider. Perego & Kolk (2012) classified assurers in four categories: accounting firms, specialists (consultants), certification bodies and others (including individuals and stakeholders’ panels). Their findings revealed that there was a significant quality gap between the others’ work (individuals and stakeholders panel) and the three other categories. The measured quality in this research was almost the same for accountants and certification bodies, while specialists (consultants) offered a lower quality assurance. Zorio et al. (2013) identified that accounting specialists performed higher quality assurance as opposed to consultants; while a recent study on the 300 largest cooperative and mutual enterprises in the world listed in the Global300 Report 2010, discovered that sustainability reporting assurance statements provided by non-accountants were of a higher quality (Seguí-Mas et al., 2015).

In contrast to previous studies but in line with the content analysis conducted in this research, the results of interviews did not support the influence of assurer type on the quality of sustainability reporting assurance from the managers’ and assurers’ viewpoints. Although both managers and assurers indicated differences between different types of assurers in terms of the approach, experience and knowledge, and managers also explained their reasons for choosing their preferred assurers (see Chapter 5), neither group identified the assurer type as a quality factor or a quality improvement solution (see sections 6.6 and 6.8).

As part of understanding the quality of assurance statements, more information about the reporting criteria and assurance standards was gathered through interviewing managers and assurers; this is presented in the next sections.

103

6.3

Reporting Criteria

As already defined in section 2.3.3, ‘reporting criteria’ represents a guideline/standard the assurer and the reporting company have agreed to use to evaluate the sustainability report (AccountAbility, 2008a, 2008b). This research found that since 2002, GRI has been the most used reporting criterion among the NZX-listed companies reviewed, as shown in Table 6.1. This table revealed a high preference for GRI, as it was the criteria used in 18 stand-alone cases, and in 20 cases (45 percent in total) in combination with other standards and guidelines.

Consistent with this finding, KPMG (2015a) also indicated that 60 percent of all sustainability reporting organisations in 45 countries surveyed used GRI. The KPMG’s survey showed that more than 80 percent of New Zealand’s top 100 companies (by revenue) referred to the GRI guideline in their sustainability reports (KPMG, 2013b). As mentioned in section 3.3, the first sustainability reporting assurance statement among the research population companies was published in 2002 and, since that year, all sustainability reporting assurance standards and guidelines used in this research had been available, except for ISAE 3000, which was effective from 2005. However, the findings of this research suggested that the reporting organisations preferred using more than one guideline/standard in preparing their sustainability report as 31 percent selected a combination.

Table 6.1 Reporting Criteria

Reporting Criteria Statement

Frequency

Statement Percent

More than one standard

GRI + AA1000APS and/or others 16

26 31%

GRI + others 4

Other combinations 6

No standard/guideline mentioned 19 22%

GRI 18 21%

Greenhouse Gas Protocol 11 13%

Company internal criteria 6 7%

AA1000APS 5 6%

Total 85 100%

In addition to the result of content analysis, the assurers interviewed commented on the criteria chosen as the reporting benchmark. With no exception, all the assurers not only named GRI as the most used and globally accepted standard, but also pointed out that they recommended the use of GRI to their clients. They believed GRI was an easy guideline to understand, follow and apply, especially for reporters in the early stages as it allowed them to choose the relevant items for their business and their industry. Meanwhile, some assurers reflected quite strong opinions about GRI:

… we suggest them to use GRI because there isn’t any other one, we don’t know any other one at the same level and that is the most globally used one as well … (AS5)

Other than GRI, AS2 and NAS1 believed the Integrated Reporting <IR> framework could be an option but it was more complicated and time consuming than GRI and they suggested the <IR> framework for companies with a higher maturity in sustainability reporting:

… [<IR>] is a quite nice framework but it actually takes a lot more to apply … (NAS1)

Table 6.1 showed that having ‘no standard/guideline’ was also a common approach among the reporting organisations. This finding was confirmed by one of the non-accounting specialists who believed that ‘Although GRI is the most popular standard among our clients, no standard is probably the most used standard’ (NAS1).

In terms of quality, the content analysis results indicated that the highest quality obtained by the assurance statements used more than one standard/guideline as the criteria, with a quality score of 30.23 out of 40 – among those assurance statements that used more than one reporting criteria, combination of GRI and AA1000APS obtained the highest quality score (32.31). This was followed by the reports evaluated against GRI, with a score of 28.50. At the other end, the lowest score was achieved by the statements prepared based on the reports examined against internally made standards (20), followed by 20.37 obtained by the assurance statements published by the companies that did not mention use of any standard/guideline (see Table 6.2).

Moreover, the findings revealed that – in terms of the quality of assurance statements – following internally designed reporting criteria did not provide reporting organisations with any extra benefit than from using no standard/guideline as the reporting criteria.

Table 6.2 Assurance Quality per Reporting Criteria

Reporting Criteria Statement Quality

More than one standard

GRI + AA1000APS + others 32.31

30.23 GRI + others 27.00

Other combinations 26.83

No standard/guideline mentioned 20.37

GRI 28.50

Greenhouse Gas Protocol 24.64

Company internal criteria 20.00

105 Although using more than one reporting criterion was identified as a popular approach used by the companies, this result showed that GRI and AA1000APS was the only combination that provided a higher quality statements than by using only one reporting criterion.