Institutionalization of the Contents of Sustainability Assurance Services: A Comparison Between Italy and United States Articles uri icon

publication date

  • April 2020

start page

  • 67

end page

  • 83

issue

  • 1

volume

  • 163

International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)

  • 0167-4544

Electronic International Standard Serial Number (EISSN)

  • 1573-0697

abstract

  • A descriptive-exploratory analysis of assurance practices is presented in this paper, by analysing the patterns of sustainability assurance reporting in two national contexts with diferent levels of assurance activity (Italy and the U.S.) over a period of 11 years (2003/2013). The study is based on theoretical insights drawn from institutional sociology and normativity production. It is framed both in the Italian situation, where assurance statements consistently include a narrow set of formal and procedural communications, and in an unsettled situation in the U.S., where assurance activity is more incipient, but where experimentation in substantial assurance disclosure practices has more room to develop. Its main implication is that the difusion of sustainability assurance and the creation of sustainability assurance disclosure norms are not without its cost: information quality does not increase with patterned practice. The results also point towards the noteworthy role of specifc professionals in the earlier and later stages of assurance practice norms. They reveal a signifcant infuence of non-Big4 frms (mainly certifcation bodies and consulting and engineering frms) in the difusion of sustainability assurance disclosure norms. In contrast, the Big4 frms appear to be positively associated with the narrowing down of the assurance focus to a selected subset of this activity in later stages of the development of the assurance norm. In this regard, this study provides insight into the circumstantial -but relevant- carrier role of the Big4 frms in determining what "assurance" means.

subjects

  • Business
  • Economics

keywords

  • assurance patterns; disclosure practices; italy; normativity; sustainability assurance content; united states