Assurance Services for Sustainability Reports: Standards and Empirical Evidence

• Published in: Journal of business ethics Vol. 87; no. Suppl 1; pp. 289 - 298
• Main Authors: Manetti, Giacomo, Becatti, Lucia
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Dordrecht Springer 01.04.2009; Springer Netherlands; Springer Nature B.V
• Series: Journal of Business Ethics
• Subjects: Accountability; Accounting; Assurance services; Audit risk; Auditing procedures; Auditing standards; Auditors; Business and Management; Business audits; Business Ethics; Corporate governance; Corporate social responsibility; Credibility; credibility gap; Ecological sustainability; Education; Empirical research; Environmental auditing; Ethical accountability; Ethics; Financial audits; global reporting initiative guidelines; Globalization; Green businesses; International auditing standards; International Financial Reporting Standards; International standards; level of assurance; Management; Materiality; Philosophy; Quality of Life Research; Reporting standards; Services; Social responsibility; Studies; Substantive procedures; Sustainability; Sustainability reporting; level of assurance; standards; credibility gap; global reporting initiative guidelines; corporate social responsibility; assurance services; materiality; sustainability reporting
• ISSN: 0167-4544; 1573-0697
• DOI: 10.1007/s10551-008-9809-x

This article contributes to the growing scholarship on the topic of assurance services for sustainability reports. We first synthetically illustrate the main international standards for the implementation of assurance services regarding the subject documents. The second part of our article is an empirical analysis of reports drawn up on the basis of the current Global Reporting Initiative 2006 guidelines, and looks at how effectively these standards have been implemented, analyzing the different typologies of assurance statement.