Kobboon Chotruangprasert
York University

kchotruangprasert@schulich.yorku.ca

Kobboon Chotruangprasert is a PhD Candidate in accounting at Schulich School of Business, York University. Kobboon's research interests include voluntary social and environmental disclosure, GRI Guidelines, and ethics within the mining industry. Kobboon holds a B.Sc. in Business Administration with accounting major from Thammasat University in Thailand, graduating with the highest grade point average among all accounting students in her year. She also received her MBA jointly from Chulalongkorn University in Thailand and York University in Canada. Prior to doctoral work, Kobboon worked in Thailand full-time for Ernst & Young as an auditor and part-time for Yamaha Thailand Music School as a piano teacher. She also worked in Canada as a research analyst for Innovest Strategic Value Advisors (now part of MSCI), where she analyzed, graded and reported companies' performance on environmental, social and governance issues, catering to clients such as institutional investors and pension funds.

Global reporting initiative indicator selection decisions: A case study

Due to the voluntary nature of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) Guidelines, GRI adopter does not have to report every GRI indicator. This paper investigates how a company decides which social and environmental indicators to report, why those indicators are chosen and whether and how GRI adoption affects indicator selection decisions. Sustainability reporting by Barrick Gold, a Canadian mining company, is used as a case study for this paper. Research methods include interviewing Barrick Gold's employees and reviewing both internal and external documents. Economic theory, institutional theory, and integrative social contracts theory are used as my analytical lenses. I argue that Barrick Gold's sustainability reporting appears to be driven most heavily by the factors associated with economic theory. Even though the number of indicators reported by Barrick Gold increases after GRI adoption, the amount of details appears to be insufficient in some cases.