Global Reporting Initiative And Its Sustainability Reporting Guidelines

Sustainability Reporting Guidelines, published by the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), has institutionalized as the leader among voluntary worldwide sustainability reporting systems. Its success can be explained using the concept of "institutional entrepreneurs" and by showcasing three types of tactics:discursive, material, and organizational strategies to change the reporting field. The framing of the GRI initiative as a win-win solution was very crucial because it has balanced several sets of competing objectives among different actors. However, now GRI has fallen short of the aspirations of its founders to use disclosure to empower civil society. This emergent logic reflects that GRI’s dominant constituencies are large global companies and financial institutions, not the less active civil society organizations.In order to explore the reason of it, this dissertation draw from Gramsci’s concept of hegemony to understand the contingent stabilization of organizational fields, and by employing his discussion of the Modern Prince as the collective agent who organizes and strategizes counter-hegemonic challenges, based on the existing study of "institutional entrepreneurs". This contested field actually has two institutional logics: the logic of civil regulation and the logic of corporate social performance. The former reflects the vision of civil society groups while the latter emphasizes its instrumental value to business. This dissertation argue that its trajectory reflects the power relations among members of the field, their strategic choices and compromises, their ability to mobilize alliances and resources, and constraints imposed by the broader institutions of financial and capital markets. The institutional logic of GRI is the result of power interactions between civil society and business.