Machine-Readable Sustainability Reporting and Assurance: A Systematic Literature Review
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.65255/jibma.v4i4.427Keywords:
Digital Reporting, ESG, Machine-Readable Reporting, Sustainability Assurance, XBRLAbstract
Sustainability reports are expected to be readable by software as well as people, yet structured disclosure is often treated as if it also solved underlying measurement and assurance problems. This review examines what machine-readable reporting changes, where its benefits arise, and why a tagged disclosure may still be difficult to assure. A PRISMA-informed search of the Consensus scholarly index was conducted on 7 August 2026. Five relevance-ranked searches produced 50 records; after removing duplicates and applying journal, scope, and metadata criteria, 30 peer-reviewed studies published between 2011 and 2026 were retained. The evidence was coded by digital function, accounting mechanism, research design, and reported limitation. Four findings emerge. Taxonomies and XBRL improve accessibility and can support comparison, but extensions and uneven user capabilities may weaken those gains. Reporting quality depends on upstream source systems, controls, and measurement choices rather than tagging alone. Digital tools expand the evidence available to assurance providers while creating new assurance objects, including models, interfaces, and provenance logs. Finally, interoperability remains partly institutional because ISSB, ESRS, and GRI serve different materiality purposes. The review develops an assurance-ready reporting chain and proposes research that follows sustainability facts from origin to tagged disclosure and assurance conclusion.
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