**3. Evidence of organizational cultural sustainability**

Organizations need to legitimize themselves in the communities where they operate [11, 12], not only making decisions and acting according to the four sustainability pillars but also rendering accounts and making these actions transparent to their stakeholders, demonstrating that they are creating value [52]. That means that organizations must constantly seek to reduce information asymmetry, especially the one established between them and their primary stakeholders. Furthermore, organizations can affect and be more directly affected by primary stakeholders; therefore, their interests must be prioritized [53–58].

By providing information on sustainability, organizations would minimize information asymmetry and demonstrate an appreciation of their stakeholders. According to [1, 2], information asymmetry exists in every contractual relationship and makes it impossible to complete contracts. Therefore, it exists between organizations and their stakeholders. Asymmetry indicates the information level is not the same between the contractual parties, and there is no perfect control possibility by one party over the other [2, 12, 20]. However, organizations can manage this asymmetry by retaining, delaying, or not showing it [2]. The results of this management can lead to greater or lesser exposure to adverse selection or moral hazards and the organization's legitimation or not in the communities where they operate [1, 2, 5, 12].

Organizations can minimize the adverse selection and moral hazard possibilities by establishing disclosure policies to reduce information asymmetry. Otherwise, stakeholders can choose between not working with the organization and reducing the adverse selection possibility for commercialization transactions, services provision, and other negotiations or remain working with the organization and run the risk of not having their interests met, being at the manager's mercy, with moral hazard [1, 2, 24, 59].

However, suppose organizations expect to remain active in the community where they are inserted and legitimized by their stakeholders. In that case, they need to demonstrate they meet that society's principles, values, and objectives [11, 55, 60, 61], that is, cultural issues especially. This demonstration can reveal the organization's cultural sustainability [20, 62], informing stakeholders about their behavior and leading them to legitimize them [9, 20, 62, 63].

Several entities have adopted initiatives for organizations' disclosure guides but lack the cultural sustainability pillar, such as:

• The Sustainability Disclosure Database [64];


These initiatives were built by listening to experts and providing an overview of information. We seek to listen to the demands of stakeholders. That is because we need to listen directly to stakeholders to contribute to the organization's efficiency of the information policy [19, 20].

The reviewed sustainability disclosure studies used one of four methodologies to establish the indicators used as disclosure references. The most used methodology is empirical analysis in the disclosure means, especially in annual and sustainability reports published by the respective organizations [62, 68–74, to name a few more recent ones]. Undoubtedly, organizational reports are important sources, as they allow stakeholders to litigate against organizations whenever interest conflicts, given the information materiality. However, reports are a more restrictive communication channel than electronic pages published on the Internet [8, 12].

Other methodologies used by the reviewed studies to build the indicators list were the empirical literature review, in which the indicators used by some served as a basis for others [10, 75–78]. In addition, some authors used guidelines established by institutions that recommend information on sustainability to be evidenced [61, 79–81]. Finally, we identified the indicators from consultations with experts with the help of the Delphi technique and/or statistical and econometric tools [82, 83].

However, empirical analyses in annual reports and empirical studies on other communication channels, such as consultations with specialists, start from an idealization of the stakeholders' interests demanded in disclosing information about sustainability [12, 63]. In other words, all these methodologies use references without the manifestation of stakeholders. That is because researchers do not apply questionnaires to stakeholders, ignoring their perspectives.

We need to listen to stakeholders, given the diversity of their interests. Listening will allow us to understand their demands and allow the company to establish a better disclosure policy [20, 25]. In this sense, the literature review has only recently made it possible to identify the emergence of a fifth methodology, listening to stakeholders for the indicators' creation. However, it is still incipient [12, 20, 22, 23]. That can occur for three reasons: the difficulty in identifying the stakeholders by disclosure [54, 56–58]; the problem of listening to their interests [12, 19–23]; or the complexity of the concept attributed to organizational sustainability [45], especially the cultural pillar that is still in the process of being inserted into the idea [19, 40].

In addition, to define indicators, represent sustainability information, add the stakeholders' perspective, it is necessary to consider their adherence to some principles: exact definition; straightforward interpretation; applicability; measurability, comparability, relevance, clarity, reality representation reflecting the abstract concept to be analyzed [14–18]. The indicators contribute to the knowledge of reality through expression. They are tools for measuring and monitoring this reality [9, 20, 84]; therefore, the need to listen to the stakeholders' interests in the creating indicators process. The indicators represent information that establishes a legitimacy relationship between the organization and its stakeholders [85, 86].
