| Abstract [eng] |
Relevance of the topic is related to the concept of Sustainable development, which includes all development areas that are currently facing issues in individual country level and worldwide: economy, social sector and ecology. Today modern, socially responsible and sustainable organizations’ managers have to select the right sustainable leadership principles and assure the continuity of it in the whole organization’s activity, including non-financial reporting. The main problem today is sustainability reporting reliability issues. These issues have to be evaluated. Such assessments are rarely performed in Lithuania, although in foreign countries this practice was introduced in the recent years. For this reason the object of research is the sustainability reporting of organizations operating in Lithuania. The main research purpose is after establishing universal sustainability reporting qualitative assessment model and analyzing sustainability reports to reveal problematic sustainability reporting areas and set recommendations for improving accountability, and thus the value creation for the organization. For this purpose, the following tasks were raised: 1) relying on relevant scientific literature analysis to justify the necessity of further theoretical and practical analysis; 2) to determine theoretical and methodological solutions for sustainability reporting assessment; 3) to form the methodology for sustainability reports qualitative assessment; 4) to perform evaluation of sustainability reports by applying developed assessment methodology, reveal their problematic aspects and propose suggestions how improved sustainability reporting could contribute to the value creation for the organization. The results of scientific literature analysis revealed that researchers distinguish the following sustainability reporting issues: the lack of reporting transparency, comparability, quality and compliance with standards. The analysis of Lithuanian and foreign researches revealed that the main characteristics for sustainability reporting transparency evaluation are: report availability, reliability and timeliness; information’s intensity, relevance and clarity; also the expression of responsibility. Sustainability reporting quality assessment could be made using traditional financial accounting evaluation criteria covering information’s relevance, comparability, verification capabilities also reports’ neutrality and clarity. The main sustainability reporting schemes are Global Reporting Initiative, United Nations Global Compact and ISO 6000 standard. Sustainability reporting qualitative study was carried out using weighted scores. 23 sustainability reports of organizations operating in Lithuania were evaluated. Qualitative analysis results showed that total analyzed sustainability reports’ transparency and quality levels were rated as average. Examined sustainability reports compliance with reporting standards was rated as high. At a certain level of transparency of the sustainability reporting, quality level was the same. Analyzed sustainability reporting issues revealed that organizations underestimate the significance of these reports and do not master the potential of value creation for the organization. The main suggestions for sustainability reporting improvement and value creation increasing are: to identify main shareholders’ interests and increase their trust; increase organization’s knowledge about value chains sustainability resulting cooperation benefits; to report more negative aspects herewith minimize risks; to perform reporting auditing thus identify fields of improvement and to determine concreate sustainability goals resulting optimized resources. |
