The purpose of sustainability reports is to represent the progress of a company’s sustainability effort and status to stakeholders. There is a need for stakeholders to benchmark sustainability performance of companies. The objective of this research was to find evidence that the GRI Application Level used in the ranking GRI compliant sustainability reports, is an indicator of financial performance for companies trading on the JSE in South Africa.The results will show that there is no evidence to show that the GRI Applications Level is an indicator of financial performance. The consequence of this evidence is that the lack of adequate benchmark standards can de-motivate companies to strive for higher sustainability performance. / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted