In the wake of huge corporate scandals in Japan and the United States, companies are under pressure to be more socially responsible.
The trend has fed demand for universal guidelines for firms to use in filing reports on how they are performing in terms of society, the environment and ethics, according to Ernst Ligteringen, head of the Amsterdam-based nonprofit organization Global Reporting Initiative, known as GRI.
"It is important to have a global standard (for comparability) because the economy is (becoming) increasingly integrated at a global level," Ligteringen said in a recent interview in Tokyo. GRI released its first guidelines in 2000. They were revised last year.