What environmental social responsibility practices do large companies manage for sustainable development?

Abstract

AbstractCurrently, the debate on corporate social responsibility (CSR) and the strategies implemented by organizations to disseminate their business actions, fuels the discussion on aspects that point to sustainable development. To show their CSR strategies, one of the mechanisms used by companies is the presentation of sustainability reports. In this work, we have modified the analysis approach traditionally used to demonstrate the characteristic factors of transparency in the field of CSR. Specifically, we focus on analyzing which indicators are the least disclosed by companies. Within this framework, the objective of this work is to analyse the practices of dissemination of environmental information based on the sustainability reports of the global reporting initiative produced by large companies, in order to establish differences and similarities in corporate social responsibility. The results obtained for a sample of 80 large companies and 67 multinational enterprises (MNEs) indicate a slight difference in the disclosure of environmental indicators. Concretely, the results reveal that 56.12% of environmental indicators are not disclosed by large companies; while, in MNEs, 51.23% of these indicators are not reported. In large companies, the greatest deficiencies in the disclosure of environmental information correspond to the categories of biodiversity, environmental grievance mechanisms, and effluents and waste. In the case of MNEs, the least disclosed categories are biodiversity, environmental grievance mechanisms, and environmental protection expenditures and investments (overall).