Abstract
The International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC) and Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) have concurrently issued guidelines for an alternative to current corporate reporting. The former issued International Integrated Reporting Framework, while the latter Sustainability Reporting Guidelines ver.4. As some commentators pointed out, the IIRC shifted its emphasis from sustainability-related information, which it shared with GRI, to investor-oriented information. Did GRI and IIRC plan to bifurcate their roles? If so, how did they do that? This paper aims to answer these questions with a focus on organizational structures, based on the strategy-structure–performance paradigm of organizational theory. Thus, shedding light on the differences in organizational structure can reveal the direction in which an organization is headed, as well as the strategies they would implement. Based on the results of organizational structure analysis and network theory, while GRI formed a network open to various stakeholders for creating new sustainability reporting practices, IIRC built a network that was dominated by financial stakeholders to apply the GRI guideline to investor-oriented guideline, in accordance with IIRC’s main purpose.
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Ogata, K., Inoue, S., Ueda, A., Yagi, H. (2018). The Functional Differentiation Between the International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC) and the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) in the Sphere of Sustainability Reporting. In: Lee, KH., Schaltegger, S. (eds) Accounting for Sustainability: Asia Pacific Perspectives. Eco-Efficiency in Industry and Science, vol 33. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70899-7_11
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