Corporations are increasingly being expected to be responsible to not only shareholders, but also to employees, society and for the environment. This expectation increases as business crises, such the Exxon Valdez oil spill and the Enron collapse, continue to occur. In New Zealand several umbrella organisations were established to aid organisations in the quest to become sustainable or corporately responsible, such as New Zealand Business Council for Sustainable Development, New Zealand Businesses for Social Responsibility, and the Sustainable Business Network. A number of high profile companies such as Hubbard Foods Ltd, Landcare Research, Fonterra and Telecom belong to these umbrella organisations and have produced reports that reflect not only economic prosperity but also environmental quality and social equity. The aim of this research is to identify how organisations are implementing corporate responsibility issues into the operations, and using this information to construct a maturity model. The value of a maturity model is as an analytic tool, where an organisation can be benchmarked against the best in the field. Developing a maturity model for integrating corporate responsibility into an organisation enables managers to identify at which stage the organisation is currently situated and then provides an action plan of where to progress in the future. A preliminary maturity model is developed based on previous models from the fields of corporate responsibility, environmental management and sustainability. This exploratory study used the case study method to analyse six organisations that are members of the New Zealand Business Council for Sustainable Development and are producing annual sustainability reports. Using the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) guidelines for sustainability reporting, 10 years of annual reports from each case company were analysed and compared against these guidelines. The results were used to identify what corporate responsibility areas businesses are currently reporting on and therefore implementing within the organisation, and identifying if there is an evolutionary pattern applicable to all organisations thereby enabling the construction of a maturity model. The findings show that although there was an increase in the GRI indicators included the reporting is poorly developed. The major areas of change have been in the reporting of governance and management structures, the development and inclusion of vision statements and changes in management policies. There was increased reporting in some environmental and social indicators, but no clear patterns of change emerged. Using the data and analysis a refinement of the proposed maturity model was made.

Det finns inte mycket forskning kring hur ett nytt redovisningssystem börjar i en organisation. Forskning kring hållbarhet och hållbarhetsredovisning har bidragit till en nyfikenhet att studera det tidiga skedet av ett eventuellt nytt system för redovisning av hållbarhet. Detta har bidragit till ett ökat intresse av att studera nätverk och relationer mellan aktörer där vi ställer oss i mitten av handlingarna i en organisation för att möjligtvis ta del av det tidiga skedet. Syftet med denna studie är att studera hur hållbarhetsredovisningen konstrueras, med konstrueras menar vi hur ett nytt hållbarhetsredovisningssystem möjligtvis kan tas fram.Vi har genomfört kvalitativa intervjuer med anställda som arbetar med sociala och miljömässiga frågor i Borås Stad. Studien har en fallstudiedesign med ett snöbollsurval. Totalt har vi intervjuat åtta anställda i kommunen varav fyra tjänstemän och fyra politiker. I empirin och analysen har vi arbetat utifrån en induktiv ansats med ett etnografiskt perspektiv. Vi har skapat egna kategorier med inspiration från Actor-network theory som metodteori. Vi har analyserat empirin utifrån metodteorin och strukturerat upp det empiriska materialet i syfte att tydliggöra våra observationer under kategorierna involverade aktörer, aktörers intressen, konflikter och hinder samt översättning.Vi har observerat att kommunen befinner sig i processen av att möjligtvis utveckla ett nytt system för redovisning av hållbarhet. Kommunen behöver fokusera på att integrera de tre hållbarhetsdimensionerna med varandra samt hur kommunen ska beräkna sociala och miljömässiga effekter uttryckta i ekonomiska termer. Studien visar på att den finansiella redovisningen har en betydande roll i kommunen och att förändringsarbete inte är förespråkat. För att bryta gamla arbetsmönster och tankesätt bör kommunen uppmärksamma sin situation och identifiera problem. Studien pekar på verkligheten där vi uppmärksammar kommunens situation. Sammantaget drar vi slutsatsen att kommunen bör bilda ett nätverk. När ett nätverk bildas integrerar aktörer med varandra där de blir aktörer i ett nätverk och får värde genom interaktion, därmed kan komplexiteten i organisationen reduceras. Bildandet av ett nätverk kan möjligtvis bidra till rekonstruktion av kommunens system för redovisning av hållbarhet. / There is not much research on how a new accounting system begins in an organization. Scientific research concerning sustainability and corporate sustainability reports has contributed to a curiosity of studying the early stages of a new possible sustainability accounting system. This has contributed to an increased interest in studying networks and relationships between actors by putting ourselves in the middle of the actions in an organization to possibly take part of the early stages. The purpose of this study is to study how corporate sustainability reports are constructed, with construction we mean how a new sustainability accounting system may be developed.We have conducted qualitative interviews with employees who work with social and environmental issues in Borås municipality. The study applies a case study design and a snowball selection. In total, we have interviewed eight employees in the municipality, four of whom are officials and four are politicians. During the empirics and analysis, we have applied an inductive approach with an ethnographic perspective. We have created our own categories with inspiration from Actor-network theory as method theory. We have analyzed the empirics based on the method theory and structured the empirics in order to clarify our observations under the categories involved actors, actors interests, conflicts and obstacles as well as translation.We have observed that the municipality is in the process of possibly developing a new sustainability accounting system. The municipality need to focus more on integrating the three dimensions of sustainability with each other and also how the municipality is to calculate social and environmental effects expressed in economic terms. The study shows that the financial accounting has a significant role in the municipality and that change is not advocated. To break old work patterns and ways of thinking the municipality should pay attention to its situation and identify problems. The study points towards the reality where we focus on the situation of the municipality. Altogether, we conclude that the municipality should create a network. When a network is created actors integrates with each other as they become actors in a network and gain value through interaction, thus reducing the complexity of the organization. The creation of a network may possibly contribute to a reconstruction of the municipality's sustainability accounting system.This paper is written in Swedish.