A qualitative study of corporate environmental reporting through the reporting software, Synergi Life

The term sustainability is infiltrating every corner of the society these days, and the corporate world is no exception. The focus among stakeholders and the society at large is on corporations’ responsibility towards society. More information about and insight in a company’s business is becoming more demanded by stakeholders, in order for them to get a better overview of the corporate world’s sustainability. Being transparent, by reporting environmental, social, and governmental (ESG) information, is a relevant measure for companies to give the stakeholder and the society the information they need. However, such reporting is not universally mandatory and there are no universal rules, requirements nor standards that tell companies exactly how ESG reporting should be done and what information such reports must include. Therefore, the way companies report today is often very different from each other which makes it difficult for stakeholders to evaluate and compare similar companies. The latter issue is very broad and can be interoperated and research from many perspectives. This thesis is however, mainly focusing on the environmental aspect of ESG reporting. This is done by using a reporting software called Synergi Life as an example. Synergi Life is an established reporting software owned by DNV (Det Norske Vertias) that makes it possible for companies across sectors to report information on different matter such as, environmental activities. This qualitative study is using collected data from the software as well as participants with different roles to create an example that shows the main challenges of environmental reporting, from the companies’ perspective as well as the stakeholder’s perspective. Relevant theories such as stakeholder theory, shareholder theory and legitimacy theory are used together with other relevant studies that presents the guidelines, initiatives, and requirements of ESG reporting to give a broad foundation for the discussion and analysis