Hållbarhetsredovisning som krav för mikro-, små- och medelstora företag

Sammanfattning: What would a legal requirement for sustainability reporting mean for opportunities and difficulties for micro, small and medium-sized companies? Large companies are today covered by a legal requirement for sustainability accounting, so why are not all companies covered by the same accounting obligation regardless of size? It is of interest to study the underlying factors that can explain how such a legal requirement could affect smaller companies based on their size. The focus of this study has been to investigate what opportunities and difficulties a legal requirement for sustainability reporting could entail for micro, small and medium-sized companies. Initially, we define the concepts of sustainability accounting in general and small and medium-sized enterprises to give the reader an understanding of what sustainability accounting means and what factors constitute micro, small and medium-sized enterprises. We have also explained the importance of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and the regulations Global Reporting Initiative (GRI). As a result of our purpose and research question, we have used the theory of legitimacy, the stakeholder theory, the signaling theory and the new institutional theory to support our reasoning. The study is designed according to a qualitative research method that is based partly on previous research but also on semi-structured interviews as a data collection method. The results are based on a total of eight interviews with people who have leading roles in micro-, small- and medium-sized companies. The results illustrate that the companies' view of sustainability reporting is positive in that it can help to structure the work with sustainability, meet a demand for larger stakeholders, reflect on the actual sustainable work and that it can be used as a tool to communicate the sustainable work one does. On the other hand, the results show predominantly the difficulties that requirements for sustainability reporting could entail. It is about the sustainable work in practice being more important than reporting it, that there is a possibility that it can give a misleading picture of companies in that it is difficult to control the sustainable activities that actually take place in smaller companies. Furthermore, the resources that would be required to report the sustainable work in the form of time, money and knowledge are something that is not considered to outweigh the legitimacy that sustainability reporting could possibly entail