Situational Environmental, Social and Governance Accounting: From Ethical Value Elicitation to Sustainability Reporting

Abstract

[Background] Globally, mandates like the EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive are shaping environmental, social, and governance accounting (ESGA) trends, which is crucial for enhancing organisational sustainability. Our domain-specific, model-driven technology allows creating adaptive tool support for ESGA, requiring a situational ESGA model as input. However, our experience has shown that organisations are rarely capable of expressing the method they need, so modelling the ESGA method is far from the starting point. [Aim] The objective of this work is to develop methodological support, given that it concerns a non-traditional requirements engineering process. Therefore, we will engineer a situational meta-method that allows configuring a domain-specific, model-driven technology. [Method] To develop this situational meta-method we apply a multi-case study approach and validate the meta-method by means of expert interviews. The situationality in the meta-method is an approach to cope with (a) the variety of situational factors involved in ESGA, and (b) the evolution expected in this domain in the coming years. [Result] The situational meta-method, called ESG4Orgs, has allowed us to create six ESGA methods that each align with the sustainability strategy of the case study organisations. Overall, the ESGA experts concur that ESG4Orgs is deemed understandable and useful. Our work is pertinent to policymakers shaping sustainability reporting legislation, managers seeking to enhance organisational impact, and scientists developing support for sustainability reporting.