How to Provide Customized Environmental Reports Properly

Customization is vital for environmental (online) communication, especially for corporate environmental reporting. Meeting target groups’ information needs strongly influences reporting success, perhaps whether users pay attention to reports at all, how they assess the value of these documents, and to what extent they are willing to make use of these communication vehicles. In contrast to its wide acceptance in guidelines however, current practice shows significant room for improvements. Hence, we propose a framework on how to provide customized environmental reports properly, described in terms of three conceptual components: (i) stakeholder analysis and information requirement analysis, (ii) XML-based document engineering, and (iii) ICT-architecture of an environmental reporting system. Customization is a real step forward to the benefit of all groups involved in or affected by environmental reporting: managers, accountants, employees, financial analysts, standard setting institutions and organizations focused on benchmarking, rating or ranking.