The Fallacy Of Assuming Equality: Evidence Showing Vastly Different Weighting Of The Global Reporting Initiatives Key Items

Abstract

The press represents the media as a key stakeholder group that is largely ignored by the strategic management branch of stakeholder theory. This study analyses over 2000 articles of the local, regional and national coverage of environmental reporting items to measure press coverage priorities as the weighting mechanism for importance of various environmental issues. The results show a dramatically diverse coverage of the 35 items of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI). This paper thus provides stakeholder evidence of environmental press coverage demonstrating hugely diverse priorities. The findings sharply question the assumption of equal weightings for communication studies employing the popular Global Reporting Initiative (2002; 2006). This study posits that such a fundamentally different index weighting provides a more relevant and useful guide for developing countries wishing to take up the spirit of the global reporting initiative. The need for country/cultural specific weightings is advocated.