The Common Good Balance Sheet, an Adequate Tool to Capture Non-Financials?

Abstract

In relation to organizational performance measurement, there is a growing concern about the creation of value for people, society and the environment. The traditional corporate reporting does not adequately satisfy the information needs of stakeholders for assessing an organization’s past and future potential performance. Practitioners and scholars have developed new non-financial reporting frameworks from a social and environmental perspective, giving birth to the field of Integrated Reporting (IR). The Economy for the Common Good (ECG) model and its tools to facilitate sustainability management and reporting can provide a framework to do it. The present study depicts the theoretical foundations from the business administration field research on which the ECG model relies. Moreover, this paper is the first one that empirically validates such measurement scales by applying of Exploratory Factor Analysis on a sample of 206 European firms. Results show that two out of five dimensions are appropriately defined, along with some guidelines to refine the model. Consequently, it allows knowledge to advance as it assesses the measurement scales’ statistical validity and reliability. However, as this is the first quantitative-driven research on the ECG model, the authors’ future research will confirm the present results by means of Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA).