Elsevier

Journal of Cleaner Production

Volume 230, 1 September 2019, Pages 445-459
Journal of Cleaner Production

Government-led Sustainability Reporting by China’s HEIs

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2019.04.360Get rights and content

Abstract

This study investigates all sustainability reports published between 2012 and 2016 by China’s Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). The aim of this paper is to investigate the characteristics of SR by China’s HEIs and what causes these traits. After theoretical frameworks are described, the general situation of Sustainability Reporting (SR) in China’s HEIs is outlined. Then, an assessment framework is constructed which is a modification of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) Sustainability Guidelines for use in HEIs, and the content analysis method is applied to analyze and assess the extent of reporting of various items of SR in China’s HEIs. Finally, this study outlined the characteristics of SR by China’s HEIs and addressed their causes. The findings show that SR by China’s HEIs is still in the initial stage in terms of not only the relative share of China’s HEIs releasing sustainability reports but also the establishment of SR standards and the reporting level; has an obvious regional characteristic; and is under the control of Chinese government. The results of the theoretical analysis show that these characteristics may be due to the lack of internal dynamics and insufficient external binding force. Furthermore, we conclude that SR by China’s HEIs is a government-led activity, and essentially it is determined by the administration-based education system. Also, the practice of the Shanghai government demonstrates an important leading and stimulating role played by the government in promoting SR by HEIs. We argue that the Chinese mode has a certain value and practical implications for many countries. The study provides necessary supplements to existing researches through identifying and exploring a different development mode of SR by 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:

  • The number of HEIs releasing sustainability reports is small and they are all located in one city.

  • The number of HEIs releasing sustainability reports are dropping and the release frequency has decreased from once a year to twice a year.

  • 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

References (73)

  • R.A. Adkins et al.

    The Feasibility of Sustainability Reporting at Dartmouth College

    (2003)
  • Y. An et al.

    Sustainability reporting at a New Zealand public university: a longitudinal analysis

    Sustain

    (2017)
  • L. Azizi et al.

    Recent trends in sustainability reporting by German universities

    Sustain. Manag. Forum

    (2018)
  • B. Ballou et al.

    The future of corporate sustainability reporting

    J. Account.

    (2006)
  • S. Cao

    The change of American higher education system and the choice of reform path--A historical comparative institutional analysis

    J. High. Educ. Res.

    (2014)
  • S. Cao

    The change of American higher education system and the choice of reform path

    Theor. Ref.

    (2014)
  • M.A. Caron et al.

    Path dependence and path creation: framing the extra-financial information market for a sustainable trajectory

    Account. Audit. Account. J.

    (2009)
  • K. Ceulemans et al.

    Sustainability reporting in higher education: interconnecting the reporting process and organisational change management for sustainability

    Sustain

    (2015)
  • S. Chatelain-Ponroy et al.

    Adoption of sustainable development reporting by universities: an analysis of French first-time reporters

    Account. Audit. Account. J.

    (2016)
  • China WTO Tribute

    A Study on the Chinese Social Responsibility Report of Golden Bee 2011

    (2011)
  • China WTO Tribute

    A Study on the Chinese Social Responsibility Report of Golden Bee 2017

    (2017)
  • T.K. Chiu et al.

    Determinants of social disclosure quality in Taiwan: an application of stakeholder theory

    J. Bus. Ethics

    (2015)
  • B. Dalal-Clayton et al.

    Sustainable Development Strategies

    (2002)
  • C. Deegan

    The legitimising effect of social and environmental disclosures - a theoretical foundation

    Account. Audit. Account. J.

    (2002)
  • D. Dienes et al.

    What are the drivers of sustainability reporting? A systematic review

    Sustain. Account. Manag. Policy. J.

    (2016)
  • P.J. DiMaggio et al.

    The iron cage revisited: institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields

    Am. Soc. Rev.

    (1983)
  • J. Dowling et al.

    Organizational legitimacy: social values and organizational behavior

    Pac. Soc. Rev.

    (1975)
  • Y. Fang

    Reconstruction of the Relationship between Government and University under the Background of Higher Education Power

    (2011)
  • M. Fang et al.

    Enlightenment of new institutionalism theory on school organizational development

    Teach. Manag.

    (2014)
  • A. Fonseca et al.

    The state of sustainability reporting at Canadian universities

    Int. J. Sustain. High. Educ.

    (2011)
  • R.E. Freeman

    Strategic Management: a Stakeholder Approach

    (1984)
  • R.E. Freeman et al.

    Stockholders and stakeholders: a new perspective on corporate governance

    Calif. Manag. Rev.

    (1983)
  • P. Gamage et al.

    Sustainability reporting by Australian universities

    Aust. J. Public Adm.

    (2016)
  • J.O.Y. Gasset

    Mission of University. Revised

    (1991)
  • R. Gray et al.

    Accounting and Accountability: Changes and Challenges in Corporate Social and Environmental Reporting

    (1996)
  • GRI (Global Reporting Initiative)

    Sustainability Reporting Guidelines: Version 3.1

    (2013)
  • Cited by (15)

    • Designing a model to estimate the level of university social responsibility based on rough sets

      2021, Journal of Cleaner Production
      Citation Excerpt :

      The main goals pursued at this stage of model development include identifying the overall sustainability picture, raising consciousness and proposing ranking tools (Du et al., 2020). However, due to the low level of social responsibility disclosure and weak reporting culture in third world countries, there is not enough information about all indicators or access to them requires a lot of resources allocated by universities (Yalin et al., 2019; Bhatia and Makkar, 2020; Thanasi-Boçe and Kurtishi-Kastrati, 2021). However, due to budget constraints in countries such as Iran, it will not be possible to allocate all the necessary resources.

    • Comparing sustainable public procurement in the education and health sectors

      2021, Journal of Cleaner Production
      Citation Excerpt :

      Through curriculum, research, and community activities, educational institutions have over the years served as significant agents of change and social transformation (Lozano et al., 2013; Ramísio et al., 2019), and these unique attributes make the sector a potentially potent tool for addressing the global sustainability challenge. For example, through teaching and research, as well as sensitisation, and awareness creation, the educational system can significantly impact the attitude and behaviour of students and other stakeholders, and facilitate the spread and mainstreaming of sustainability thinking in society (Lozano et al., 2013; Yalin et al., 2019). As one of the largest public sectors in terms of expenditure (Fan et al., 2008), the education sector’s enormous purchasing power can be harnessed to generate substantial positive sustainability outcomes.

    • A systematic review of the trends and patterns of sustainability reporting in universities

      2024, International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education
    View all citing articles on Scopus
    View full text