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2020 was a milestone towards greater coherence in ESG disclosure December 2020 User View by Richard Howitt, former European Parliament Rapporteur on CSR and Chief Executive at the IIRC WHILE 2020 will go down in history as the year of Covid-19, it will be written up in the accountancy and financial management textbooks of the future as the year in which a … more
Four ideas for rethinking materiality September 2020 User View by Donato Calace, Vice President of Accounts and Innovation, Datamaran IN 2003 Simon Zadek and Mira Merme published “Redefining Materiality Practice and public policy for effective corporate reporting”. It was pathbreaking in its argument that a broader definition of corporate accountability – one that embraces ESG matters – requires a new approach to … more
Weighing the future cannot be a technical, bureaucratic exercise March 2019 User View by Dr Carol A. Adams, Professor of Accounting, Durham University Business School, Durham, United Kingdom and Swinburne Business School, Australia INVOLVED in sustainability standards for many years, including the development of the AA1000 standard in the 1990s, my view has always been that we should learn from … more
After 5 decades environmental materiality has become systemic December 2017 User View by Jacqueline Aloisi de Larderel, former Assistant Executive Director of UN Environment and former Director of its Division of Industry, Technology and Economics PERCEPTIONS of what are the most relevant environmental themes have changed in many ways over the last five decades. Early on it was an awakening … more
Law, jurisprudence and courts are challenged to keep up with winds of change March 2017 User View by Mervyn King, former Judge of the Supreme Court of South Africa and Chairman of the King Committee on Corporate Governance in South Africa THERE are differences in how materiality is defined by the accounting profession, the legal profession, courts, stock exchanges and regulators. … more
Discretion vs transparency in banks reporting: time to raise the bar November 2016 User View by Liad Ortar, Head of The Corporate Social Responsibility Institute, College of Law and Business, Ramat Gan – Tel Aviv, Israel ONE would expect leading financial institutions to make a strong effort to uphold high standards of external reporting, while at the same time maintaining … more
Staying focused while reporting holistically September 2016 User View by Lisa French, Chief Technical Officer, International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC), London and Stathis Gould, Head of Professional Accountants in Business and Integrated Reporting, International Federation of Accountants (IFAC), New York THE IIRC’s International <IR> Framework requires that an integrated report explain the factors that affect the organization’s ability to create … more
Tipping points: where perception meets reality July 2016 User View by Claudia Volk, Associate Director, Research Products, Sustainalytics, Germany THE crux of materiality is “the threshold at which sustainability topics become sufficiently important that they should be reported”, says the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) Guidelines. This points to what the GRI and RobecoSAM (see Defining What Matters 2016) recently called “sustainability reporting materiality” … more
DJSI: Detecting sector-specific, financial materiality March 2016 User View by Rashila Kerai, Sustainability Analyst RobecoSAM, Switzerland AT RobecoSAM we believe that you can’t take a long-term view of a company without thinking about sustainability. We’re an asset manager focused solely on integrating sustainability into the investment process. This is grounded in the belief that we can provide better informed investment decisions through the … more
A counterproposal to FASB: Make materiality transparent January 2016 User View by Sanford Lewis, Attorney and Council, Investor Environmental Health Network, United States IN late 2015 the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB), US equivalent of the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB), received comments on proposed changes to the accounting rules that govern corporate disclosure in financial statements. The proposed changes on definitions of … more
Ratings, rankings and indices are converging around materiality December 2015 User View by Allen White, Vice President, Tellus Institute; Co-Founder Global Reporting Initiative and Corporation 20/20; Founder, Global Initiative for Sustainability Ratings, United States THE User Views of 2015 on Materialitytracker lead us to conclude that the boundaries between financial and non-financial are rapidly dissolving. Debates over the relevance of environmental, social and … more
Time to apply the principle of materiality to materiality November 2015 User View by Wim Bartels, Global Head of Sustainability Reporting & Assurance at KPMG, The Netherlands AS an accountant it took me some time to understand the concept of “materiality” as used in the sustainability community. First of all it appeared to be meaning something different than what I was used … more
We need Multiple Capital Accounting and Integrated Materiality September 2015 User View by Mark W. McElroy, Ph.D., Executive Director, Center for Sustainable Organizations, and Co-Founding Partner, Thomas & McElroy LLC, United States EARLIER this year, Doug Park, Director of Legal Policy and Outreach at the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB), published a short article in which he said, “More than ever before, investors … more
In this corner, DJSI; and in this corner, materiality. Ding! July 2015 User View by Robert G. Eccles, Professor of Management Practice at Harvard Business School, and Tim Youmans, Researcher at Harvard Business School, United States “If we we’re serious about meaningful reporting on ESG performance, the focus should be on targeted, business-relevant metrics and a simple, transparent reporting process. The … more
Conventional and alternative materiality determinations May 2015 User View by Chris Tuppen, Senior Partner, Advancing Sustainability Ltd and Honorary Professor, Keele University, United Kingdom HOW does the contemporary business strategist decide which issues to focus on? For all companies, getting the process of materiality assessment right is critical because correctly identifying the material issues creates a substantive and essential link … more