Squaring the Circle, or a Quantified Rating of ESG Reports

Issue 2022/2 of Public Finance Quarterly highlights that investors, regulators, business partners and consumers evaluating the viability and long-term performance of businesses do not only rely on traditional business indicators/metrics, but also on non-financial – environmental, social and governance – risks and opportunities. In their decision-making processes, sustainability (ESG) aspects are increasingly emphasised (Boros at al, 2022). Continuing this thread of thought in an accounting approach, this paper draws attention to an underlying issue with the comparability of ESG reports, which is the absence of measurability and the lack of metric measurement systems. While financial statements are quantified mappings of economic events affecting a company, socio-political expectations and their impacts, which are formulated in ESG reports, are difficult to quantify and display in a measurable form. This research focuses on the quantitative and qualitative measurement, reliability and comparability of ESG indicators, data, ratings, scoring systems and metrics. A content analysis of domestic and international sustainability reports has been carried out and has lead to the conclusion that the problem in assessing environmental, social and corporate governance performance is not to be found in the lack of data, but in the oversupply of tools and frameworks.