Standardisation of XML-based DTDs for Corporate Environmental Reporting: Towards an EML

Discussions concerning companies’ environmental aspects gained considerable importance and challenged business in recent years. Comprehensible and authentic as well as customised corporate environmental reporting requires substantial quantities of relevant information. In order to automate corporate environmental reporting, the presented approach focuses on structuring and standardising environmental documents using the eXtensible Markup Language (XML). In a more detailed fashion, the contribution is dealing with the harmonisation of three current XML-based document type definitions (DTDs) proposed for internet-based corporate environmental reporting. From an academics’ point of view, this harmonisation is thought to be a considerable effort: firstly, for contributing to the discussion of standardising corporate environmental reporting taken as a whole, and secondly, for stimulating the processes towards shaping an Environmental Markup Language (EML). From a practitioners’ perspective, such a standardised XML-based DTD contributes to employ Internet technologies and Internet services productively for corporate environmental reporting. Reporting companies and their target groups are enabled to exploit the huge opportunities and media-specific technical benefits efficiently. The paper is structured in four parts: The first part deals with the design process used to develop each DTD. In the second part, the three DTDs are presented in a more detailed fashion. Based on this, the third part refers to the process of harmonisation of the proposed DTDs. The paper ends with a conclusion.