نوع مقاله : مقاله پژوهشی
نویسندگان
1 دانشجوی دکتری حسابداری، گروه آموزشی حسابداری، پردیس بین المللی واحد ارس، دانشگاه تهران، ارس، ایران
2 گروه حسابداری، دانشکده حسابداری و علوم مالی، دانشکدگان مدیریت، دانشگاه تهران، تهران، ایران
کلیدواژهها
عنوان مقاله English
نویسندگان English
Sustainability reporting has emerged as a fundamental mechanism for improving corporate transparency, accountability, and long-term value creation in response to increasing stakeholder expectations regarding environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance. Although internationally recognized frameworks such as the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB), Integrated Reporting (IR), and the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) provide valuable guidance for sustainability disclosure, they often fail to adequately capture the contextual and industry-specific characteristics of developing economies and highly energy-intensive sectors. The Iranian cement industry, as one of the country's most strategically important industries, plays a significant role in economic development while simultaneously generating considerable environmental impacts through high energy consumption, greenhouse gas emissions, and natural resource depletion. In addition to its environmental footprint, the industry faces increasing pressures arising from stricter environmental regulations, stakeholder demands for greater transparency, technological transformation, and the transition toward low-carbon production systems. Despite its importance, no comprehensive sustainability reporting framework specifically tailored to the operational, institutional, regulatory, and socio-economic characteristics of this industry currently exists. Consequently, sustainability reporting practices remain fragmented, inconsistent, and predominantly focused on mandatory financial disclosures rather than integrated sustainability performance. This research therefore seeks to bridge this theoretical and practical gap by identifying the dimensions, indicators, and underlying components required for developing a comprehensive sustainability reporting framework specifically designed for the Iranian cement industry. To achieve this objective, a qualitative meta-synthesis approach based on the seven-stage methodology proposed by Sandelowski and Barroso (2007) was employed. Relevant studies were systematically retrieved from major international and national scientific databases, yielding an initial pool of 317 publications. Following rigorous screening procedures based on predefined inclusion and exclusion criteria and methodological quality assessment using the Critical Appraisal Skills Programme (CASP), 40 high-quality studies were selected for in-depth analysis. To ensure the trustworthiness and reliability of the coding process, inter-coder agreement was assessed using Holsti's coefficient (0.855), Scott's Pi (0.793), Cohen's Kappa (0.820), and Krippendorff's Alpha (0.814), all indicating a high level of coding consistency. Qualitative data were analyzed using ATLAS.ti software through iterative open, axial, and selective coding, leading to the extraction and synthesis of 150 conceptual components, which were subsequently categorized into 30 indicators and 10 overarching dimensions. These dimensions comprise Economic, Social, Environmental, Governance, Innovation and Technology, Stakeholder, Cultural, Institutional, Resilience, and Accountability and Reporting. While the first four dimensions correspond to the traditional ESG framework, the remaining dimensions represent emerging sustainability constructs that reflect the unique institutional, organizational, and socio-economic characteristics of the Iranian cement industry. The Economic dimension emphasizes sustainable value creation, financial performance, resource efficiency, responsible investment, and long-term competitiveness; the Social dimension addresses employee welfare, occupational health and safety, human rights, workforce development, and community engagement; the Environmental dimension focuses on emissions reduction, energy efficiency, resource conservation, waste management, biodiversity protection, and environmental compliance; and the Governance dimension incorporates corporate ethics, board effectiveness, regulatory compliance, transparency, strategic oversight, and anti-corruption mechanisms. In addition, the Innovation and Technology dimension highlights digital transformation, green technologies, knowledge management, intelligent manufacturing, and technological capability as key enablers of sustainable performance, whereas the Stakeholder dimension emphasizes systematic stakeholder identification, engagement, communication, collaboration, and responsiveness. Furthermore, the Cultural dimension reflects the importance of organizational values, sustainability-oriented culture, diversity, inclusion, ethical behavior, and continuous organizational learning, while the Institutional dimension focuses on regulatory capacity, policy alignment, inter-organizational collaboration, institutional legitimacy, and support mechanisms. The Resilience dimension encompasses organizational adaptability, climate resilience, crisis preparedness, supply chain continuity, and long-term sustainability under uncertain environmental and economic conditions, and the Accountability and Reporting dimension addresses integrated reporting, measurable sustainability indicators, external assurance, transparency, comparability, disclosure quality, and continuous performance evaluation. One of the principal contributions of this study lies in extending the conventional ESG perspective by incorporating dimensions that are particularly relevant to emerging economies and resource-intensive industries, including institutional capacity, organizational resilience, innovation capability, and cultural readiness for sustainability transformation. These additional dimensions demonstrate that sustainability reporting should not merely be regarded as a compliance-oriented disclosure mechanism but rather as a strategic management instrument capable of supporting organizational learning, stakeholder trust, risk management, and sustainable competitive advantage. The findings further indicate that digital technologies and innovation function as cross-cutting enablers that strengthen data quality, reporting reliability, and evidence-based decision-making across all sustainability dimensions. The proposed framework therefore offers a holistic, industry-specific, and context-sensitive approach that integrates international sustainability reporting principles with the operational realities of the Iranian cement industry. From a theoretical perspective, this study enriches the sustainability reporting literature by proposing a multidimensional conceptual framework that extends existing reporting models beyond traditional ESG boundaries. From a practical perspective, the framework provides policymakers, regulators, corporate managers, investors, auditors, and other stakeholders with a structured foundation for enhancing sustainability disclosure quality, improving organizational accountability, facilitating strategic decision-making, and supporting alignment with evolving international sustainability reporting standards. Moreover, the framework establishes a robust conceptual basis for future empirical research aimed at developing measurement instruments, validating sustainability indicators through quantitative techniques, and implementing integrated sustainability reporting systems across other energy-intensive industries in developing countries.
کلیدواژهها English