Making a virtue out of necessity – Design principles for an ESG reporting platform

Stricter regulatory requirements and increasing stakeholder demand for sustainability information have prompted companies to rework their reporting systems. By making a virtue out of this necessity, this article aims to develop design principles (DPs) for a harmonized ESG reporting platform – fulfilling both compliance with external regulations and driving sustainability management accounting. We opted for Design Science Research in Information Systems as our research approach and chose a science and technology company for our case. Combining findings from the management accounting and control system (MACS) literature with lessons learned from two design cycles in practice, we provide ten DPs to drive future discussions. Their contribution is as follows: (1) They are grounded in theory and extend the knowledge about the levers of control from MACS literature with the technical implementation of ESG reporting at the intersection of MACS and IS literature. (2) To be widely applicable, we evaluated our DPs with experts within and beyond our case company. (3) For practice, the DPs should serve as an easy-to-apply blueprint for standardizing, storing, and sharing sustainability data across a company.