Thinking of reporting on your sustainability efforts through an outlet like the GRI? Good for you.

That said, you may have encountered some opposition to the premise, or criticisms highlighted by Corporate Social Responsibility guru Mallen Baker, who has pointed to an oft-cited flaw in the GRI approach, namely the fact a report is essentially a company’s own narrative of its sustainability performance.

“All the current models of reporting expect the companies to provide their own narrative — to tell the story complete,” he noted on his blog. “And yet that doesn’t work, because the end user actually doesn’t read the reports, and doesn’t trust the company to provide its own context. There are no expert interpreters of this information. All the focus on assurance is about checking data — but that isn’t the real issue. People by and large don’t think the companies will lie about the data … Read more...