Investigating Sustainability Reporting Standards in Multinational Canadian Publicly Traded Companies Operating in Emerging Economies

This thesis seeks to investigate how sustainability reporting standards can be used to assess strategic performance in emerging economies by multinational Canadian publicly traded companies. Interviews were conducted and took place between July 2020 and July 2021. The organizational participants comprised a total of 22 sustainability experts and executives from eleven different multinational Canadian publicly traded companies operating in emerging economies. The in-depth semi-structured interviews were the primary method utilized to tackle the principal and sub-research questions. A critical review of the literature showed that relatively little research is dedicated to the methods employed in integrating and evaluating sustainability activities and performance from a strategic viewpoint. Consequently, this thesis seeks to address a significant research gap. 

Building on the existing study, this study conducted a systematic review of sustainability or equivalent reports and semi-structured interview responses from the sustainability executives using qualitative content analysis. This thesis designed and proposed an original analytical framework that provides a systematic approach to the integration of sustainability with organizational processes and mainstream infrastructure of multinational Canadian publicly traded companies operating in emerging economies. The proposed analytical framework is reinforced by a sustainability integration strategy map and sustainability integration performance measures to help guide the implementation process. The proposed analytical framework, the supported strategy map, and performance measures are based on the “Balanced Scorecard Framework” and may help guide multinational Canadian publicly traded companies through the process of organizing and structuring sustainability into their critical business infrastructure. This study found that none of the organizational participants had utilized sustainability reporting standards to assess their strategic performance in emerging economies. The findings also illustrate how a ‘synergy’ and coherence can be created between strategic and sustainability performance measurements and sustainability reporting standards through an ‘aggregate measurement’ process.