Why Reporting Sustainability? The Portuguese Non-financial Reporting’s Socio-historical Evolution

Based on socio-historical accounting research, with Institutional theory lens and a qualitative methodology through a documentary analysis from (1972–2023), this research analyse the pressures to Non-Financial-Reporting (NFR) in the Portuguese context. The results show that the pressures exerted by organizations globally, with regulations and guidelines, are the major impetus for homogenization and encouragement in the disclosure of non-financial reports in Portugal, however, and given that the guidelines do not provide a specific model, highlights the initiatives of national organizations such as the Comissão do Mercado de Valores Mobiliários (CMVM), which recently published the first Portugal’s model of NFR, thus allowing for the encouragement of mandatory or voluntary NFR.