Table 3 Items emerged from the coding... | Emerald Publishing

Table 3

Items emerged from the coding process with frequency per single area

	Area 1 (what motivates organizations to disclose non-financial information?)		Area 2 (what issues shall non-financial disclosure address?)		Area 3 (what are the anticipated future perspectives of non-financial disclosure?)
Item	Freq	Explanation	Freq	Explanation	Freq	Explanation
Accountability	0	N/A	4	Importance of bringing out relevant themes in terms of organizational actions Quotes “It becomes crucial to select issues to be highlighted in these reports, and accountability is the only way to do so!” “Cherry picking is a common practice, which is in contrast with ESG paradigm: it is crucial to define what is relevant and what isn’t, who is accountable and who isn’t”	2	Possibilities of defining benchmarking activities Quotes “The only way to be really accountable is to have benchmarks, otherwise we will never know how we are doing” “Benchmarking (…) can help us at increase our accountability (…), and yet very little has been done”
Collaboration	4	Bottom-up approach is universally seen as the only possible way to create the report Quotes “We need (…) to interact with stakeholders and to do so, we need a tool to let them know (…) who we are and what we do! Collaboration is the only possible answer” “Stakeholders’ collaboration in finding what is relevant and what isn’t is crucial. Therefore, our motivation was based on stakeholders’ requests”	4	The drafting of the document comes to life through the collaboration of all parties. The ESG perspective must, therefore, be disseminated and accepted by everyone Quotes “everyone shall collaborate to produce a report which can be at the same time intelligible by every reader but also useful at understanding what our organizations does and where the management wants to go” “Collaboration sometimes is problematic (…). Often [internal stakeholders] perceive the nonfinancial disclosure as a mere tick-boxing exercise”	0	N/A
Standardization	0	N/A	0	N/A	2	The use of standards can assist in benchmarking processes but runs the risk of distorting the purpose of the documents: one of the potential side-effects of ESG. Quotes “Benchmarking (…) can help us at increase our accountability (…) but (…) to do so, standardization is needed”
Certification	0	N/A	0	N/A	3	Although it may seem to be the future of social reporting, at least one organization out of the 3 that pointed out how certification is a relevant issue, believes certification is premature and risky for this type of statement Quotes “Certifying non-financial disclosures as it happens for financial reports can certainly enhance even more the ESG paradigm” “Certifying nonfinancial disclosure does not align with the ESG paraidigm as no tools have been defined yet to make these reports comparable. It is thus premature to define certification as a real issue to face
Mission	1	Referring to the ESG paradigm in disclosing non-financial information is useful to make a re-evaluation of one’s mission in order to make it accessible to all stakeholders Quotes “ESG is a paraidmg that we need to acknowledge as soon as possible (…) Many organizations in our field believe this has nothing to do with us. Out mission, however, is to promote social well-being and (…), as such, the ESG paradigm can give use the right tools to make it happen”		0 N/A	0	N/A
Guidelines	2	The preparation of non-financial disclosure documents always starts with the reading of guidelines. ESG may represent a common indicator to base the document structure Quotes “More guidelines are needed (…) but recent reforms provided us the right push to improve”	3	Guidelines are sometimes not suitable because they are too generic: they do not take into account the uniqueness of each individual structure and can be misleading Quotes “More [specific] guidelines are needed”	2	The development of drafting guidelines and standards must always take into consideration the specific nature of the activities, especially regarding healthcare organizations, which are less inherently related to environmental issues but are more anchored in social matters “More [specific] guidelines are needed, but specificities of health organizations must be taken into account”

	Area 1 (what motivates organizations to disclose non-financial information?)		Area 2 (what issues shall non-financial disclosure address?)		Area 3 (what are the anticipated future perspectives of non-financial disclosure?)
Item	Freq	Explanation	Freq	Explanation	Freq	Explanation
Accountability	0	N/A	4	Importance of bringing out relevant themes in terms of organizational actionsQuotes“It becomes crucial to select issues to be highlighted in these reports, and accountability is the only way to do so!”“Cherry picking is a common practice, which is in contrast with ESG paradigm: it is crucial to define what is relevant and what isn’t, who is accountable and who isn’t”	2	Possibilities of defining benchmarking activitiesQuotes“The only way to be really accountable is to have benchmarks, otherwise we will never know how we are doing”“Benchmarking (…) can help us at increase our accountability (…), and yet very little has been done”
Collaboration	4	Bottom-up approach is universally seen as the only possible way to create the reportQuotes“We need (…) to interact with stakeholders and to do so, we need a tool to let them know (…) who we are and what we do! Collaboration is the only possible answer”“Stakeholders’ collaboration in finding what is relevant and what isn’t is crucial. Therefore, our motivation was based on stakeholders’ requests”	4	The drafting of the document comes to life through the collaboration of all parties. The ESG perspective must, therefore, be disseminated and accepted by everyoneQuotes“everyone shall collaborate to produce a report which can be at the same time intelligible by every reader but also useful at understanding what our organizations does and where the management wants to go”“Collaboration sometimes is problematic (…). Often [internal stakeholders] perceive the nonfinancial disclosure as a mere tick-boxing exercise”	0	N/A
Standardization	0	N/A	0	N/A	2	The use of standards can assist in benchmarking processes but runs the risk of distorting the purpose of the documents: one of the potential side-effects of ESG.Quotes“Benchmarking (…) can help us at increase our accountability (…) but (…) to do so, standardization is needed”
Certification	0	N/A	0	N/A	3	Although it may seem to be the future of social reporting, at least one organization out of the 3 that pointed out how certification is a relevant issue, believes certification is premature and risky for this type of statementQuotes“Certifying non-financial disclosures as it happens for financial reports can certainly enhance even more the ESG paradigm”“Certifying nonfinancial disclosure does not align with the ESG paraidigm as no tools have been defined yet to make these reports comparable. It is thus premature to define certification as a real issue to face
Mission	1	Referring to the ESG paradigm in disclosing non-financial information is useful to make a re-evaluation of one’s mission in order to make it accessible to all stakeholdersQuotes“ESG is a paraidmg that we need to acknowledge as soon as possible (…) Many organizations in our field believe this has nothing to do with us. Out mission, however, is to promote social well-being and (…), as such, the ESG paradigm can give use the right tools to make it happen”		0 N/A	0	N/A
Guidelines	2	The preparation of non-financial disclosure documents always starts with the reading of guidelines. ESG may represent a common indicator to base the document structureQuotes“More guidelines are needed (…) but recent reforms provided us the right push to improve”	3	Guidelines are sometimes not suitable because they are too generic: they do not take into account the uniqueness of each individual structure and can be misleadingQuotes“More [specific] guidelines are needed”	2	The development of drafting guidelines and standards must always take into consideration the specific nature of the activities, especially regarding healthcare organizations, which are less inherently related to environmental issues but are more anchored in social matters“More [specific] guidelines are needed, but specificities of health organizations must be taken into account”

Source(s): Table by authors