Sustainability Reports and the Missing of One Official Standard : Consequence for Audit Quality

Abstract: Sustainability reporting has been increasing in popularity in the last decade giving medium tolarge companies a tool to communicate with their users about their sustainability activity. Asglobalization and technology were introduced and increased in demand many violations startedby companies including human right violation, economic inequality, pollution, etc. Thisviolation led to different stakeholders demanding for companies be transparent and report ontheir sustainability activity through sustainability reporting.As sustainability reporting increased in popularity many challenges arose including a lack ofhomogeneity and comparability for the users and the firms themselves. Many standards andguidelines were created and are still being created to minimize the problem that firms,stakeholders, and auditors face. However, many standards and guidelines introduced lead tomaking the job of auditors more complex and harder as they must know and understand all thestandards available.Multiple studies were done regarding sustainability reports and the absence of one singleofficial standard. The studies explored the subject with interviews or case research tounderstand the consequence or effect that has on auditors and/or audit quality. Similar to thosestudies, this paper also follow the previous research by answering the following question thatwas posed by the authors: “What are the consequences of the absence of one single officialstandard in sustainability reporting on the audit quality?”. To answer this question, the authorsinterviewed 10 participants who work with auditing, accounting, and analyzing sustainabilityreports which helped the thesis with a practical contribution. Furthermore, the thesis alsocontributed to the knowledge by examining the results using Emergency Theory, LegitimacyTheory, and Complexity Theory. This thesis provides evidence regarding the consequence ofhaving multiple standards with low law requirements for sustainability reporting and why thereis a need for one single official standard.The findings of this thesis shows that auditors are face multiple challenges when it comes tonot having one official standard. The challenge affects the audit quality when auditingsustainability reports. The results show that sustainability is very multidimensional whichmakes the topic complex to auditors. Auditors also face the challenge of sustainability beingan emerging concept in the accounting domain which leads to not much research and theoriespresent to produce frameworks and standards for sustainability reports.