Reporting on Supply Chain Sustainability: Measurement Using Item Response Theory

The purpose of this article is to measure the level of reporting about supply chain sustainability using item response theory (IRT). IRT allows inserting items and their respondents into a single scale and creating interpretable scales. An instrument composed of 24 items was prepared and applied to 345 sustainability reports from companies in 21 sectors of the Brazilian economy. It used Samejima's gradual response model to construct a scale to measure the level of reporting on supply chain sustainability. As a result, five interpretable levels were identified in the scale constructed (Minimum, Low, Medium, Medium High and High). The reporting about the supply chain in most of the sustainability reports analyzed (48.41%) is concentrated at the scale's lowest or minimum level: 24.93% are at the second or low level, 2.61% are at the medium level, and only 0.29% of the reports are at the high level of the scale.