Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
a case in point for discussing the role that sustainability reporting might
play in the debate over agricultural GMOs.
At its most explicit, the social argument in favor of reporting is that
it empowers all stakeholders to hold companies accountable for their
actions and to exert pressures for changing behaviors, either through
political action, market mechanisms, or through more collaborative
mechanisms.
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A less often discussed, but crucial, argument for reporting
is that it forces the reporting companies to gather and critically examine
data about themselves, and, in the cases of serious commitment to pro-
ducing a high-level report, to engage with their most important stake-
holders: those who experience, and have an interest in, the impacts of
the company's activities. This, in turn, may lead to considerable organi-
zational learning and may create dialogue between the company and the
rest of society.
A third key benefit of reporting is that the collective process of reach-
ing a consensus on what and how to report creates a platform for a dis-
course among many different types of societal actors while providing a
common language for conducting it. It is these two aspects of reporting -
its potential to create a platform for a multi-stakeholder engagement and
a broader societal discourse on many dimensions of agricultural GMOs -
that we address in this section.
50
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N. Gunningham et al., Social License and Environmental Protection: Why Businesses
Go Beyond Compliance.
Law and Social Inquiry
29(2): 307-341 (2004).
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For a more extensive discussion of the historical foundations, development, and insti-
tutionalization of GRI, see: Brown, H., De Jong, M., and Levy, D. 2009. “Build-
ing Institutions Based on Information Disclosure: Lessons from GRI's Sustainabil-
ity Reporting.”
Journal of Cleaner Production
17(4): 571-580; Levy, D., Brown,
H. S., and de Jong, M. 2010. “NGO Strategies and the Politics of Corporate Gov-
ernance: the Case of Global Reporting Initiative.”
Business and Society
49: 88-
115; Halina Brown et al., The Rise of Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) as a
Case of Institutional Entrepreneurship, Working Paper #36. Cambridge, MA: John
F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University; http://www.hks.harvard.
edu/m-rcbg/CSRI/publications/workingpaper 36 brown.pdf; (last accessed Aug 8,
2008).
