The Discourse of Risk and Materiality in Sustainability Reporting

This paper explores the extent to which risk and materiality are integrated in organisations and their reports. Risk and materiality are key concepts underpinning sustainability reporting and integrated reporting. They share similar objectives – to identify material issues that affect an organisation’s ability to create value – yet they appear to exist in parallel in many organisations. The ongoing attempt to identify material issues and risks leads to multiple discourses about what are the most important issues to deal with, which can adversely affect an organisation’s value-creation outcome. From interviews with board members, risk managers and sustainability managers, we found that there is an ongoing discursive struggle between the sustainability managers, who primarily engage in a stakeholder discourse in their attempt to give meaning to the concept of materiality, and the Board and risk managers who interpret materiality through a risk and financial lens. It is clear that the sustainability managers have not built support for their concept of materiality, as it does not resonate with other actors, particularly the Board members who have more power and legitimacy than the sustainability managers. The sustainability managers have failed to convey their meaning of materiality and their discursive practices have not taken hold within the organisations. In this context, the Board warrants voice. In opening the “black box” of materiality, we found that in reality it is interpreted through a risk discourse.