As businesses come to be recognized as corporate citizens, expectation in terms of the organizations' contribution towards sustainable development is also on the rise. Not satisfied with the traditional indicators of financial performance, stakeholders demand a transparent, and accountable view of the organization's performance, and how it impacts not just the economic parameters, but also the social and environmental aspects. Sustainability reporting which gives a holistic perspective of the organization's initiatives and depicts its commitment to stakeholders, is a concept gaining ground. With a host of agencies, codes, practices and principles, a framework is still emerging, which promises to be rewarding for the companies adopting it, but the companies first need to thrash out the challenges and most important of all have a willingness and commitment to disclose voluntarily.

With the rhetoric for transparency, accountability and responsibility gaining ground, there has been an increased demand for reporting not only the business issues of the company, but also beyond that. As business concerns move beyond shareholders to include stakeholders, there is pressure on corporates to take on measures like Triple Bottom Line (TBL) accounting. While corporate governance reports gained prominence in the light of financial scandals and scams, the proponents of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) intend to give social and environmental issues equal prominence to financial indicators such as profitability. Over a period of time, the CSR has become an increasingly large set of voluntary actions, company practices, corporate values and legal requirements. While mechanisms are still not in place to ensure compliance with a standard set of measures and reporting parameters, a desire to be seen as a good corporate citizen drives the adoption of CSR initiatives. While a number of organizations mention some of their CSR initiatives in their Annual reports or Corporate Governance Reports, or on their websites (Reliance, Dabur, L&T, etc.); there are only a few companies in India which have come out with Sustainability Reports or CSR Reports. In the absence of legal requirements and guidelines in place, the sustainability reporting guidelines by Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) forms the backdrop for many companies. However, as surveys show, an increasing number of global organizations have started issuing sustainability reports or are planning to do so in the coming years. This is an indication that such a disclosure framework would become a business imperative in the days to come.

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