Sustainable Development or Business Sustainability? a Luhmanian Analysis of Integrated Reporting

This paper integrates the ideas of the German sociologist Niklas Luhmann (1927-1998) with the highly topical issue of sustainability reporting. Luhmann sought a detailed description of the world as a set of complex systems which he applied to ecology. We discuss the gestation and requirements of the International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC) conceptual framework of 2013, suggesting a  negation  focus on either sustainability or ecology.

Our research provides no instant blueprint or solution but a coherent way of understanding and thinking the complex set of systems and sub-systems involved in the multi-capital, multi-measurement-unit, multi-stakeholder and multi-motivated ever mobile morass which is the planet-focused sustainability problem.