The course aims to unfold social, environmental and sustainability reporting and assurance practices of companies and third sector organisations, as well as dialogic accounting practices, adding a workroom of data collection and processing through which students can concretely implement what they have learned.
Teaching material available on the e-learning platform of the University of Florence (e-l.unifi.it)
Learning Objectives
The course aims to provide an understanding, from a business administration point of view, of social, environmental and sustainability reporting and assurance practices implemented by companies and third sector organisations.
At the end of the course students are able to read and to understand the social, environmental and sustainability reports of the aforementioned organisations and to actively contribute to the drawing up of these documents.
Prerequisites
Business administration principles
Teaching Methods
This is a taught course based on face-to-face learning and laboratory activity of data collection and processing
Type of Assessment
Evaluation of the laboratory activity and oral interview
Course program
The course addresses the following topics:
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for business: new perspectives for CSR
• The UN SDGs
• Role of companies and third sector organisations in the 2030 Agenda
Corporate Social Responsibility
• Definitions and examples
• Reasons underlying social and sustainability reporting
Non-financial reporting
• Legislative Decree 254/2016 and the European Directive on non-financial reporting
• Examples and case studies
CSR and sustainability reporting and assurance
• The process before the product: social and sustainability reporting
• The reference standards: GRI, IR, AccountAbility, SA8000, ISO 26000
• Standards for sustainability reporting assurance: ISAE 3000
The Italian reform of the third sector organisations (TSOs) and the social reporting
• Main innovations introduced by the TSOs
• The guidelines on the Social Report for TSOs (G.U. n.186 - 9.08.2019)
The relevance of stakeholders in sustainability reporting
• Organisations and their stakeholders
• Stakeholder engagement in sustainability reporting: opportunities and methods
The social impact evaluation
• Definition and assessment of social impact
• The new guidelines for the evaluation of social impact (G.U. n.214 - 12.09.2019)
• Examples and case studies