Reporting
Comment: reporting
December 01 2004
by Briefing staff
It's not what you do...
Behind this announcement is the beginnings of a very significant change in the Global Reporting Initiative. Dubbed 'generation 3', the new approach will test to destruction the question of whether one size really can fit all. If lots of companies in hugely different sectors and varying cultural /national reporting contexts are to comply with one standard, it will have to have considerable flexibility. But if the standard is to work as a real badge of achievement, it will have to have clear, objective performance criteria, not lots of relative interpretation, and set the performance bar quite high. At present over 600 companies claim to use the guidelines, but fewer than 50 are formally "in accordance" with their full (currently quite flexible) terms. We think there are some hard choices ahead. Whether GRI is a mass movement for those on the accountability journey or a prize for those who have arrived will be fought out over the next two years.
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