Perception of executives from Portuguese Municipalities regarding the materiality of non-financial information

Abstract

By better understanding, managing and disclosing their impacts, organisations can improve strategic decision-making, reduce risks, identify business opportunities and legitimise relations with stakeholders. To achieve these goals, the information disclosed must be material. In the public sector, when managing public assets and resources, it is essential that they publicise their sustainability performance, i.e. allow access to non-financial information, thus creating a more complete and comprehensive picture of their positive and negative impacts on the community. In this context, the aim of this work is to find out the perception of public sector executives, more specifically, some of the Portuguese municipalities, regarding the indicators they consider materially relevant for decision-making, for self-knowledge, and/or for publicising to all interested parties. A survey was therefore drawn up and sent via Google Forms to all Portuguese municipalities with some economic performance and environmental performance indicators defined in the GRIStandards . The results obtained show that 47 per cent of the sample consider self-awareness of environmental and economic indicators to be very relevant; and 46 per cent consider them to be relevant. With regard to disclosure, 45 per cent consider these indicators to be very relevant and 47 per cent to be relevant.