Assessing quality assessment of corporate social reporting: UK perspectives [An article from: Accounting Forum]

This digital document is a journal article from Accounting Forum, published by Elsevier in 2004. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Description:
This paper examines evaluation systems of UK corporate environmental and social reporting (CSR). Three issues are addressed: what do corporations and quality assessors (QAs) regard as quality CSR; problems with quality assessment in practice, and; formal monitoring processes and award schemes as a determinant and driver of CSR. Findings are informed by interviews with four UK-based assessment organisations and 60 corporate representatives. The paper concludes that: corporations adopt less comprehensive definitions of quality than QAs; QAs adopt more stringent definitions of quality than academics; methodological problems of quality assessment highlighted in the academic literature are experienced by QAs; and that benchmarking and award schemes are important drivers of CSR.