Assurance audit in sustainability reporting and a research in BIST

Companies are organizations that make a significant contribution to economic, environmental and social welfare. Sustainability reports, which show the effects of these organizations' activities on environmental, economic and social factors, have become one of the important elements of corporate reporting today. Sustainability reports have become an integral part of the voluntary activities of businesses. The need for independent assurance about the publication of these reports and the reliability of the report information has brought assurance auditing to the fore in recent years. This thesis study, by revealing the importance of sustainability reporting in the context of assurance audit, includes determining whether the sustainability report benefits information users and whether it is important for the sustainability report to pass the assurance audit. The aim of thesis study is to propose and implement an effective scoring model that can enable the qualitative evaluation of sustainability reports and be used in the content analysis of GRI. In the study, the sustainability tariffs burden model sourced by Morhardt et al.(2002) based on GRI 2000 and ISO 14031 standards was used. The model in question is a whole according to the GRI-G4 guidelines. A total of 91 indicators (9 economic, 34 residential and 48 social performance) were scored between 0 and 3, and the sustainability ratings of the enterprises were calculated. Understanding the determinants of sustainability reporting in the context of assurance engagement is one of the foundations of research. It is aimed to conduct a content analysis with categorized themes by examining the contents of the published sustainability reports in the context of sustainability theories, standards, risks and performances. It is seen that AA1000, ISAE3000, GRI Standards, and some local standards are used to provide assurance for sustainability reports and integrated reports In this context, in the study, a total of 341 sustainability and integrated annual reports of 54 businesses published between 2007 and 2020 were reviewed and it was determined that 89 of them passed assurance audits. As a result of the qualitative study, a total of 89 sustainability and integrated annual reports belonging to 20 enterprises were examined. The data obtained; By performing content analysis with the MAXQDA 2020 qualitative data analysis program; frequency tables, code maps and percentile pie charts were prepared.