Sustainability reporting in the framework of corporate goverance and financial reporting

Abstract

Corporate governance is perceived as a mostly legal phenomenon by most lawyers. However, it has (at least) two more layers: economic/financial, and ethical. These two are overlapping and in-terwoven. The corporation cannot be “just” profit oriented any longer, it has to keep up with ethical and envi-ronmental standards. The paper is a follow-up to research done several years ago within an internal grant orient-ed to accounting (which analyzed the new obligation of big corporations to supplement non-financial infor-mation to financial reports from 2017). It shows the development to the next step – sustainability reporting that will gradually be implemented since 2024. The paper uses results of an internal project (with the author as the main titleholder), where a book on non-financial reporting published in 2020 was the main output. Further research of available literature, legal acts, and legislative proposals (both Czech and EU) was done for recent development of the ar-ea. The basic scientific methods of analysis, synthesis, comparison, deduction, were used for work on the paper. The aim of this paper is to present an overview of recent, current and future development of non-financial reporting in a broader context. Also, it implies where and how this process should be incorporated into both obligatory and optional courses of law curricula, and illicit the discussion on this topic. After analysing the sources that already exist in this area (that is developing very quickly in recent years) it shows that the area is very complex and complicated one. If new requirements should be implemented in time and completely, a new, interdisciplinary ap-proach will be required both from people preparing reports for corporations, auditors of the reports, and also educators preparing those experts.