Sustainability Accounting Standards in the USA – Procedural Legitimacy : Governance, Participation and Decision-Making Processes

This chapter examines the formal due process for the development of sustainability accounting standards and the participation of stakeholders in this process. It helps to refine current understanding of procedural legitimacy for multi-stakeholder initiatives. I analysed all the public documents available for the Consumption I group of standards developed by the U.S.-based Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB). Qualitative analysis is used to examine the due process and stakeholders' participation, thereby clarifying procedural legitimacy. I explore the due process for sustainability accounting standards by looking at several key aspects of a multi-stakeholder process: governance, participation, transparency, and accountability. I conclude that the SASB developed an expert-based procedural legitimacy, which is a model diametrically opposed to the Global Reporting Initiative's inclusive model. This has implications with regard to the voices that are silenced (civil society, SMEs, and NGOs) and therefore on the content of the standards that will be widely applied in the future – whether application is voluntary or, if recognised by the Security Exchange Commission, mandatory