Sustainability reporting has
been increasingly criticized and especially legitimacy and accountability of
the reports are questioned. Although the legitimacy of sustainability reports
is questioned, it has not been studied further how stakeholders expectations
are influenced by assumptions of social contract. We study stakeholders’ views
on sustainability reporting by applying nano-level social contract theory. Our
research question is: how do stakeholder interpretations differ concerning
sustainability reporting when it comes to meeting the requirements of social
contract? We interviewed representatives of internal and external stakeholders
of two Finnish companies on the usability and challenges of sustainability
reporting. The study constructs a typology of stakeholder expectations and
social norms influencing these expectations. The study contributes by showing
how the stakeholder expectations are contradictory, not only between different
stakeholder groups, but also among individuals within those.