ABSTRACT
Public policy initiatives to promote corporate sustainability 1 are contested on many fronts, but a strong case is emerging that firms that are operationally dedicated to sustainability tend to outperform firms less committed to sustainability (Eccles, Ioannou and Serafeim 2014). It is no coincidence, therefore, that a new generation of corporate reporting standards is emerging that will help investors and other key stakeholders including employees, customers, suppliers, communities and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) develop a more comprehensive understanding of corporate performance than GAAP financial reporting provides alone. As they have with traditional investment analysis, information intermediaries are playing an influential role in the development and dissemination of corporate sustainability reporting. While the market for sustainability information is still developing, broad-based, mainstream acceptance by diverse corporate stakeholders now seems assured. The question needs to be asked: What type of information intermediary business model is most likely to produce the least biased assessments?
