Restoring trust in sustainability reporting: the enabling role of the external assurance

In the current scenario characterized by distrust about business contributions to sustainable development, it is necessary to identify new tools to legitimate companies’ operations. The main initiatives launched by supranational institutions and standard setters contributed to this goal by providing new reporting standards to encourage companies to disclose their environmental, social, and governance information on a mandatory or voluntary basis. However, the proliferation of reports prepared by companies with different attitudes toward sustainable development underlined the need to identify alternative accountability mechanisms to restore the signaling effects of adopting these technologies. In particular, a key role is covered by external assurance mechanisms, which represent an emerging research stream in accounting research. According to this evidence, our contribution aims to contribute to this debate through a science mapping of the existing knowledge about external assurance. The insights collected revealed that academics identified a set of information about the main constraints and opportunities related to adopting external assurance mechanisms that could support the recent initiatives launched by international organizations.