Social Accounting in the Credit Union Sector: GRI Readiness

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Abstract

The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) 2002, revised in 2006 is increasingly being used as a framework to report on an organisation's social and environmental impacts. This paper explores the ability of smaller regionally based credit unions to report under the GRI. In exploring the reporting information categories the paper draws on prior research which has documented the requirements for social accounting information by internal stakeholders in the credit union sector.The information requirements under the GRI framework are compared with what is currently available or is potentially available under existing traditional reporting mechanisms in order to gain an insight into the level of change needed within organisations to adopt a social and environmental reporting strategy. Based on the responses of management and directors significant components of the reporting requirements of the GRI are currently able to be generated from existing internal systems. To many of the respondents this was a surprise as the organisations from which the participants had been drawn were not involved in regular or consistent reporting of their social and environmental impacts due to perceptions that it would require resources already tied up in other areas of the organisation. It was further found that the information provided by such a reporting framework would be of value to this group of decision makers.The paper begins with a discussion of the literature pertaining to the reporting of social and environmental data by organisations before a brief overview of the credit union sector is provided. A summary of the findings of a study exploring the reporting requirements of stakeholders in the Australian credit union sector follows before the presentation and analysis of the results of a survey exploring the availability and usefulness of information of the type required under the GRI.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationConference on Pacific Basin Finance, Economics, Accounting and Management (PBFEAM)
Place of PublicationAustralia
PublisherQUT
Pages1-22
Number of pages22
ISBN (Electronic)9781741072433
Publication statusPublished - 2008
EventPBFEAM 2008, 16th Annual Conference - Brisbane, Australia
Duration: 02 Jul 200804 Jul 2008

Conference

ConferencePBFEAM 2008, 16th Annual Conference
Country/TerritoryAustralia
Period02/07/0804/07/08

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