Government-led Sustainability Reporting by China’s HEIs
Introduction
Changing awareness has meant that sustainability has become one of the main topics of global concern in regards to ecological problems, and has become highly relevant to society (Lozano et al., 2013, Dienes et al., 2016). In this context, the corporate world needs to turn to Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) for access to technical skills and leadership abilities to meet the need of becoming more environmentally and socially responsible. Generally speaking, students are the future managers, leaders, scholars and citizens, whose capability of dealing with interrelated economic, environmental and social issues in their future careers may be largely created by HEIs through education, research, knowledge transfer, and even the management and promotion of their own sustainability. This helps to spread sustainability thinking and mainstream it within society, and thus contributes to improved sustainability throughout the world (Fonseca et al., 2011, Ceulemans et al., 2015). Therefore, in taking the above roles and responsibilities seriously, HEIs are often expected to be at the forefront of sustainability practices (Adams, 2014).
SR is the periodic voluntary assessment and public disclosure of sustainability information, with the purposes of assessing the efforts and progress towards sustainability of an organization, and communicating the efforts and progress in the economic, environmental and social dimensions to stakeholders (Lozano et al., 2013, Fonseca et al., 2011, Dalal-Clayton and Bass, 2002). Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) guidelines play an important role in the sustainable development (SD) of universities. The GRI guidelines (an indicator-based framework established in 2000 and the most frequently used in the world) are often adhered to compile sustainability reports because it is believed that the indicators of the framework are the most detailed, competent, and prescriptive (Dienes et al., 2016, Lozano, 2006, Daub, 2007, Velazquez et al., 2006). Currently, the GRI guidelines are the “standard” in several sectors. Organizations apply the GRI guidelines to communicate standardized, reliable, and relevant information to stakeholders, in order to disclose their most critical impacts on the economy, environment and society, which can be used to make more informed decisions within the business and among its stakeholders. The framework has been seen as a tool for harmonizing the approaches of sustainability assessment and reporting in HEIs (Fonseca et al., 2011, Adkins et al., 2003, Newport et al., 2003). In addition, as a self-reporting framework for HEIs to measure their sustainability performance, the Sustainability Tracking, Assessment and Rating System (AASHE, 2017) is also adhered to compile sustainability report by some HEIs, especially in North America. By the end of the year, there were 320 rated HEIs out of 931 participants (758 from the U.S., 81 from Canada and 92 from other countries).
The most common term used for company’s reports on sustainability is ‘corporate social responsibility (CSR)’ and ‘sustainability report’, the latter was used more (KPMG, 2013). In China, according to relevant statistics, the number of CSR reports issued annually increased from 1 in 2001 to 1472 in 2017 (China WTO Tribute, 2011, China WTO Tribute, 2017). Similarly, social responsibility reports of China’s HEIs also increase from 1 in 2008 to 22 in 2016. Since the reporting of SD information by China’s HEIs is non-mandatory, it is not surprising that the number of reports is small and at an early stage of development, which is similar to the situation in other countries of the world (Sassen and Azizi, 2017, Sassen and Azizi, 2018, An et al., 2017, Gamage and Sciulli, 2016, Azizi et al., 2018). It is worth noting, however, that by the end of 2017, almost all of China’s HEIs releasing sustainable reports were located in Shanghai, an international metropolis in China, and that all the reports were compiled in accordance with only one guideline developed by the local government. This is a far cry from the fact that HEIs in other countries that release sustainability reports are geographically dispersed and mostly follow the GRI or The Sustainability, Tracking, Assessment & Rating System (STARS1) (Sassen and Azizi, 2017, Sassen and Azizi, 2018, An et al., 2017, Gamage and Sciulli, 2016, Azizi et al., 2018). Moreover, in this context, what is the disclosure quality of SR by China’s HEIs? It is thus interesting to find and analyze the characteristics of SR by China’s HEIs. In addition, we decided to analyze SR by China’s HEIs for two other reasons: extant literature regarding SR by HEIs in developing countries is still incipient and there is an additional demand to strengthen disclosure quality regarding the sustainable activities of them.
Therefore, in this paper, we seek to explore the characteristics of SR by China’s HEIs and discuss the following questions: what is the cause of the characteristics? And what we can learn from China? To investigate the subject, based on the assessment framework of the economic, environmental and social dimensions of GRI, and with reference to China’s Instruction, Sector Supplement for Public Agencies (SSPA) and the results of related research, we set up a four-dimensional evaluation framework that includes the education dimension and carried out a content analysis of all sustainability reports of China’s HEIs.
To grasp and analyze the subject more sensibly, three complementary theoretical frameworks are employed: agency theory; stakeholder theory; neo-institutional theory (DiMaggio and Powell, 1983) and legitimacy theory (Suchman, 1995), Our findings show that SR by China’s HEIs has made a preliminary development so far, but the quality of information disclosure is poor, and is an obvious government-led activity.
The paper proceeds as follows. First, after a literature review on the subject studied, we describe the theoretical frameworks. Next, we present the general situation of SR by China’s HEIs. Then, we present our research design, including empirical data collection, empirical method, and findings based on an analysis of sustainability reports of China’s HEIs. Finally, we discuss our findings in the light of the theoretical frameworks employed and highlight the contributions, limitations of this research and suggestion for future study.
Section snippets
Literature review and theoretical background
Gasset (1991) first brought forward the concept of social responsibilities of higher education institutes (HEIs). He believed that HEIs have three functions, namely, cultural teaching, speciality teaching, and scientific research and cultivation of new scientists, and differentiated the functions by levels. He proposed that HEIs should not be closed to “ivory towers” but be involved into social activities and serve the progress of the public and society. In 2017, Global University Network for
The location and number of HEIs releasing sustainability reports in China
The HEIs that are currently releasing sustainability reports in China are mainly concentrated in the mainland of China. The HEIs in Hong Kong have also published some reports, but given the differences in their political and economic systems, this study focuses on the mainland of China. The HEIs releasing sustainability reports in the mainland of China exhibit a regional distribution. With the exception of one college (Zhejiang Financial College released a sustainability report spontaneously in
Research design
The aim of this study is to examine SR by China’s HEIs. After researching the literature concerning SR by HEIs, our methodology was designed to construct an assessment framework to assess sustainability reports of China’s HEIs regarding the amount of information disclosed and the quality of its information. We also held 3 interviews with professors on the indicators of the assessment framework from related research area. They agreed that the education dimension was important for evaluating SR,
Results
The assessment results show that the SR by China’s HEIs pays no attention to the economic indicators and other economic information, discloses environmental and social dimensions at a relatively low level, and focuses more on the reporting of the educational dimension (Fig. 5), as shown below.
Analysis and discussion
Based on the aforesaid findings, we may realize that SR by China’s HEIs is still in the initial stage, and features a low level development and slow growth in general with the main characteristics as follows:
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The number of HEIs releasing sustainability reports is small and they are all located in one city.
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The number of HEIs releasing sustainability reports are dropping and the release frequency has decreased from once a year to twice a year.
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The release requirements, formulation criteria, release
Declarations of interest
None.
Fundings
This work was supported by the Beijing Social Science Fund Energy Base Project “A Study on Clean Utilization and Development of Energy in Rural Area under Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Coordinated Development” [grant number 17JDYJB011], the National Natural Science Fund Project of China “The Analysis Model and Policy Research on the Conduction Effect of Carbon Quota Auction Mechanism on Emission Reduction Cost in Power Generation Industry in China” [grant number 71673086], the Beijing Social Science
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