Social Responsibility and Sustainability: How Companies and Organizations Understand Their Sustainability Reporting Obligations

Abstract

Since 2015 exists at EU level the obligation for certain enterprises to prepare a sustainability report. This concerns particularly the DAX 30 organizations, which had to adapt their corporate reporting till 2017, including the adaptation of the existing reporting on social and ecological contents. Siemens, for instance, already presented in 2000 a “Corporate Citizenship Report” (CCR). Beside the CCR there is a wide range of terms for sustainability reporting, such as “CSR-Report”, “Sustainable Value Report” or “Sustainability Report”. Beside the variation of the report titles, also regarding the focal issues an ambivalent interpretation occurs. A large part of the reporting enterprises orientates itself on the reporting standards of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI). Also the integration of ecological and social subjects in the annual business report is practiced. The present publication compares the sustainability reports of all DAX 30 enterprises and discusses the content differences. Beside the report titles, it investigates the correlation between titles and content. Scope of the contribution is to find out whether a clear border can be pulled between CSR reports and sustainability report and if so which are the assessment criteria.