ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses sustainability accounting from communication perspective. The increasing length of annual reports and sustainability reports, its variation (integrated, combined, independent), the use of media (websites and social media) and society’s growing use of public information are indicative of the growing importance of accounting communication for sustainability.
The chapter begins with the questions why, to whom and how information about environmental and social aspects of the business is communicated, both internally in companies and externally, from company to various stakeholders. The focus in Section 10.1 is on the motives (10.1.1), target groups (10.1.2) and channels (10.1.3) for sustainability reporting. Sections 10.2 and 10.3 discuss how sustainability information is communicated externally. Here we present communication strategies (10.2) and linguistic strategies (10.3) used by companies in sustainability reporting. The rest of the chapter provides an overview of research traditions in the area of accounting communication (10.4), as well as research methods (10.5) that can help researchers to study aspects of accounting communication of sustainability.
