Corporate Sustainability Reporting Inches Upwards

Adoption of sustainability reporting by the nation’s largest public companies continued inching upwards in 2016.

Eighty-two percent of companies in the S&P 500 index, a widely followed barometer of the U.S. stock market, now report on environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) issues, compared to 81 percent in 2015, according to new research from the Governance & Accountability Institute.

The practice of issuing a sustainability or corporate responsibility report has made modest gains in recent years after its dramatic climb from just 20 percent of companies reporting in 2011 to 72 percent reporting in 2013.

For companies that don’t yet ...