Adoption of the Global Reporting Initiative by FT500 firms: Overcoming the Liability of Foreignness

Abstract

The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) is the most widely accepted global framework for voluntary corporate reporting of environmental and social performance and has been adopted by thousands of businesses across 72 countries (GRI, 2013). It is considered the ‘leading template for voluntary sustainability reporting’ (Brown et al., 2009) and the ‘most relevant institution in the sustainability context’ (Moneva et al., 2006). However GRI reporting has fallen far short of attaining a status equivalent to financial reporting standards, which are mandatory in most countries. Sustainability reporting standards such as the GRI have not yet achieved the same status and are only mandatory in a few countries. Despite its name, implementation of the GRI has been highly uneven geographically. Indeed, in some countries such as the USA and the UK, an analysis of companies in the GRI database (http://database.globalreporting.org/) shows that the uptake and diffusion of the GRI to new organizations appears to be slowing down (Levy et al., 2010).