Corporate Responsibility Reports Research Articles

Research on the Disclosure of Environmental Accounting Information in Listed Steel Companies

Amid escalating global environmental challenges, the transparency in environmental accounting is now central to upholding corporate social responsibility and fostering sustainable growth. In China, where the steel industry significantly contributes to carbon emissions, the transparency of its environmental accounting is pivotal to meeting the nation's "dual carbon" objectives. This study analyzed environmental accounting data from 28 publicly listed steel companies, drawing from their annual corporate and social responsibility reports between 2018 and 2022. The findings reveal advancements in the steel industry's environmental accounting practices; however, notable inconsistencies persist in disclosure content, format, frequency, and accuracy. To rectify these inconsistencies, this paper suggests targeted measures to standardize and improve the environmental accounting disclosures of China's listed steel companies, supporting the industry's and nation's progression towards sustainability.

A Corpus-Based Study on the Identity Discourse of Chinese and American New Energy Vehicle Companies

This paper uses the 2020-2021 social responsibility reports and influence reports of BYD and Tesla respectively, two leading companies in the world’s electric vehicle production field, which rank among the world’s top 500 companies, as data. Starting from the identity of social constructivism, combined with the discourse-historical approach, and with the help of the corpus tool Wmatrix, the corporate responsibility reports and impacts of Chinese and American new energy vehicle companies are compared from the three dimensions of macro themes, meso communication strategies and micro language characteristics. Individuality and commonality in the construction of identity discourse in power reports. The study found that Chinese companies highlight themes such as industry rankings, development history, fairness and justice; they focus on corporate capability communication strategies, use quantitative markers and advanced adjectives to highlight the company’s strong strength, and actively construct industry leaders; while American companies emphasize employee care, global vision and sustainable development concepts, tend to communicate corporate social responsibility strategies, and use active verbs to present specific corporate activities and construct the identity of social contributors. This study has reference value for improving the ability of Chinese enterprises to construct international discourse.

Risks of human rights violations while ensuring the working conditions of employees at the enterprise

The risks of human rights violations are increasingly becoming an object of close attention on the part of society, the state, and enterprises. The analysis showed that the right to work in conditions that meet the requirements of safety and hygiene is one of the most important for the worker. The state has formed a mechanism to ensure this right. However, it is not uncommon for businesses to fail to meet the requirements of health and safety standards. In this aspect, there are both direct and indirect violations, as well as violations in the supply chain due to the connivance of the actions of partners. In world practice, more and more attention is paid to the due diligence of companies in matters of human rights. At present, the business itself has become interested in reducing such violations, as this is fraught with risks, and therefore with consequences. Russian companies do not stand aside. Corporate responsibility reports increasingly contain information on the risks of human rights violations and the company's actions in this direction — ensuring human rights in business. Observance and respect for human rights is becoming an important indicator of the level of development of society and business. As a result of the study, the authors present the risks of violation of the employee's rights to decent working conditions and consider the positive consequences of the absence of these violations. It should be noted that the article attempts to develop indicators of the risks of violation of working conditions, as well as to determine target values for indicators within the framework of the activities of an individual enterprise.

Corporate Responsibility Communication and Score Trends: A Buyer and Supplier Perspective

The growth of corporate responsibility initiatives continues as firms are facing increasing pressure from stakeholders. This study aims to analyze what factors in corporate responsibility communication impact the value creation for a focal buying firm. Monthly corporate responsibility reports and corporate responsibility scores were collected from twelve chemical and pharmaceutical manufacturing firms active in sustainable procurement initiatives. Sentiment analysis was utilized via the Harvard General Inquirer lexicon that connects syntactic, practical, and semantic information to determine the sentiment polarity for the classification document. Topic classification through multiple supervised machine learning algorithms and comparisons was conducted for buyer and supplier dyads to determine topic classification alignment. Initial propositions are developed indicating the role of focal firm communication strategy as well as sentiment alignment between buyer and suppliers' corporate responsibility communications on a focal buying firm's corporate responsibility performance. We propose communication sentiment tends to follow the corporate responsibility score trends in firms. Additionally, buying firms with suppliers who also advocate positive sentiment toward corporate responsibility tend to have greater growth in corporate responsibility scores indicating the importance of positive consumer corporate responsibility communication. This study extends knowledge of corporate responsibility communication and proposes that alignment in sentiment between the buyer and supplier enhances corporate responsibility. We also propose alignment in corporate responsibility topics among buyer and supplier dyads do not necessarily influence performance in the same way as sentiment.

A Corpus-based Multi-dimensional Analysis on Chinese and US Corporate Responsibility Reports: A Case Study of HUAWEI and Apple

The discourse of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) report can predict the performance of CSR. Research on the CSR report of international well-known companies can provide reference and encouragement for others listed companies. Based on the multi-dimensional analysis method of Biber, this study investigates the linguistic features of the CSR report discourse of Huawei and Apple. This study makes a comparative analysis of the CSR discourse from the two firms, to explore the differences in discourse functional dimensions between Chinese and American corporate CSR reports. This study finds that, on the one hand, there are differences between Chinese and American CSR reports in dimensions of Involved versus Informational Production, Explicit versus Situation-dependent Reference, and Abstract versus Non-abstract Information. Compared with Apple’s CSR reports, Huawei’s CSR reports are more informative and explicit, but less interactive and abstract. On the other hand, there is no significant difference between Huawei’s and Apple’s CSR reports in Narrative versus Non-narrative Concerns and Overt Expression of Persuasion dimensions, indicating that CSR reports are less narrative and persuasive in both Chinese and American firms. This study has implications for improving the quality of Chinese enterprises’ CSR reports and enlightenment value for corporations to improve social responsibility performance.

A corpus-assisted study of vague language in corporate responsibility reports of the cosmetics industry

A corporate social responsibility (CSR) report is a form of information disclosure about environmental, health, and human rights issues. It serves as an essential bridge for communication between enterprises and stakeholders. Enterprises can use vague language (VL) to strategically communicate with the public, establish a positive corporate image, and legitimize their activities. In recent years, many scholars have studied the usage and communicative function of VL in general conversational discourse, yet VL in business discourse has not received much attention. 
 
 In this study, 30 social responsibility reports of 10 world-renowned cosmetic enterprises between 2015–2019 were collected to build a corpus. With the help of the corpus software AntConc, this paper explores VL, specifically in CSR reports, using a corpus-assisted approach. Further, the quantitative findings are complemented by the contextualized interpretation of the communicative functions of VL in CSR reports. The major findings of this research are as follows. There are four types of VL used in CSR texts: quantity, degree, time, and softening stance-taking. In addition, the use of VL can help achieve several communicative purposes of CSR report drafting (i.e., provide an appropriate amount of information, enhance persuasion, and self-protection). Some practical suggestions are discussed for improving the awareness of the strategic use of vagueness in CSR reports.

Sustainability Reporting at a Crossroads in Italian Universities: Is Web-Based Media Adoption Deinstitutionalising Sustainability Reporting?

Higher education institutions and universities have recently started to publish their sustainability and corporate responsibility reports. Yet, due to digitalisation and the benefits of digital reporting, websites offer organisations novel opportunities to communicate more updated, timely and interactive information than a periodic sustainability report. However, we know little about sustainability reporting practice within universities and their use of online communication. This study examines the relationship between sustainability reporting practices and web-based communication practices in Italian universities. We employed a qualitative enquire and content analysis of the sustainability web pages of Italian public universities by analysing their content and updates and their relationship with their adoption of sustainability reporting. Our results suggest there are risks to web-based media being used to replace sustainability reporting, resulting in a deinstitutionalising effect for sustainability reporting. This study contributes to the literature on sustainability reporting and disclosure in universities by exploring web-based university communication on sustainability issues and stimulating the debate on replacing sustainability reports with more timely and interactive forms of communication.

SUSTAINABILITY REPORT DISCLOSURE: A GOOD CORPORATE GOVERNANCE MECHANISM

A sustainability report is a document that provides internal and external stakeholders with corporate responsibility reports on social, economic, and environmental aspects of an organization's or company's success in order to achieve sustainable growth. The aim of this analysis is to see how good corporate governance affects sustainability reports. Institutional ownership, an independent board of commissioners, and an audit committee are the study's independent variables. A quantitative analysis approach was used in this study. The sample was taken using a technique known as purposive sampling. The sample used in this study is a legitimate company listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange that publishes sustainability and financial reports on a regular basis for the 2016-2018 period, with a total of 16 firms. Institutional ownership and the audit committee had a positive impact on the sustainability study, according to the findings. The sustainability report has no impact on the independent board of commissioners. These findings suggest that the presence of an independent board of commissioners has had no substantial impact on the company's decision to disclose its sustainability report.

A study of social policies based on the example of the Bulgarian hotels on the Black Sea coast

Research background: The implications of globalisation for social policy have been highly debated at the specialised literature. Social policies as an element of corporate responsibility reports (CSR) is neglected compared to environmental information. This can have a negative effect on the sustainability and development of industries directly dependent on their staff. Such sector in Bulgaria is the tourism where at the national level, the main challenge is the adequate parallel development of human resources as they underlie tourist product construction and development. Purpose of the article: The main aim of the study is to analyse factors that impact on the disclosed staff-related social policies at the financial statements of hotel enterprises in the territory of Varna and Burgas Black Sea regions in Bulgaria. The factors under analyses are the size of the organisation, available external audit control, available foreign participation in the capital, applicable accounting standards, accounted result (profit or loss); enterprise category. Methods: The adopted research methods are logical, deductive and comparative methods, methods of analysis and synthesis. To verify the author hypotheses the IBM – SPSS Statistics software is used. Findings & Value added: The results of the study show that comparatively high percentage of the enterprises do not publish staff- related information. This could lead to harmful effects to globalisation based on asymmetry in the data, problems with recruitment of qualified staff, unjustified economic decisions by data users. From all factors, under review, the strongest calculated statistic relationship is between the external audit control and staff-related disclosures.

Pentair releases 2019 Corporate Responsibility Report

Pentair has published its 2019 Corporate Responsibility Report highlighting the company's efforts to support a more sustainable future.

Pentair releases 2019 Corporate Responsibility Report

Pentair has published its 2019 Corporate Responsibility Report highlighting the company's efforts to support a more sustainable future.

The role of HRD in CSR and sustainability: a content analysis of corporate responsibility reports

PurposeThis study aims to examine the role of human resource development (HRD) in corporate social responsibility (CSR) and sustainability initiatives of multinational companies (MNCs).Design/methodology/approachThe authors analyze contents of corporate responsibility (CR) reports disclosed by 23 MNCs from Europe, Asia and North America to examine HRD’s contribution to CSR and sustainability, with particular attention to long-term human development and organization development.FindingsThe analysis of CR reports indicates that HRD is perceived as playing a role in the following areas: diversity, equity and inclusion; community engagement; work–life balance; employee long-term growth and development; performance management; business ethics and ethical culture; and raising CSR awareness. In all areas, HRD was identified as playing a significant role in supporting companies’ CSR agendas.Originality/valueThis study extends research on the intersection of HR, CSR and sustainability and provides evidence of HRD’s important contributions to CSR and sustainability.

Corporate Responsibility Reporting in Africa: The Effect of Macroeconomic Indicators and Political Regime

The main aim of this paper is to empirically assess the relationship between macroeconomic indicators, political regime, and corporate responsibility reporting in African countries. Using ex post facto research design, the paper stands out from previous analyses by including other independent variables, such as regulatory quality, rule of law and government effectiveness in assessing the relationship between corporate responsibility reporting, macroeconomic indicators, and political regime. The population comprises 58 African countries, and the sample is based on 48 African countries. Secondary data was employed to gather information on the variables. The study used a multiple regression model to examine the relationship between foreign direct investment, gross domestic product, inflation, political regime, and corporate responsibility reporting in African countries. The study found an insignificant positive relationship between the number of corporate responsibility reports, political regime, foreign direct investment, gross domestic product, and inflation after applying controls for government effectiveness, regulatory quality, and rule of law. The paper assists in understanding the relationship between political regime, macroeconomic indicators, and corporate responsibility reporting in Africa. Also, an understanding of how institutional factors influence corporate responsibility reporting in African countries could help enforcement institutions, such as the stock exchange, industry regulators and key players that monitor corporate, social, and environmental responsibility issues, to take the necessary steps to improve responsibility reporting provided by organizations in Africa. To conclude, the paper makes a unique contribution to the assessment of the relationship between macroeconomic indicators, political regime, and corporate responsibility reporting.

Pentair publishes 2018 Corporate Responsibility Report

Pentair's recently released Corporate Responsibility Report puts a spotlight on the company's corporate and community citizenship from the 2018 fiscal year.

Pentair publishes 2018 Corporate Responsibility Report

Pentair's recently released Corporate Responsibility Report puts a spotlight on the company's corporate and community citizenship from the 2018 fiscal year.

Corporate social responsibility employment narratives: a linguistic analysis

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is twofold: first, it investigates whether and to what extent “linguistic hedging”, an impression management form of linguistic expression that conveys an ambiguous level of commitment, is used in corporate social responsibility (CSR) employment narratives; and second, it explores whether there is any difference in the use of linguistic hedging between written and spoken corporate forms of language. It mobilises these objectives by examining employee-related narratives made by electronic manufacturing services (EMS) providers domiciled in Taiwan, in the context of labour malpractice incidents.Design/methodology/approachTwo groups of data are examined: corporate responsibility reports (written language) and interviews and speeches of corporate founders and senior executives (spoken language). The research sample is ten Taiwanese EMS firms, all of which attracted public criticism and scrutiny due to a series of employee-related incidents. The sample period is between 2009 and 2013. Linguistic hedging is measured quantitatively by the relative word frequency of hedges, using the concordance software ANTCONC, with findings interpreted through the lens of legitimacy theory and impression management.FindingsThe study found that hedging was evident in CSR narratives. The EMS providers in Taiwan appeared to use hedging in employee-related disclosures to manage legitimacy challenges due to employee-related incidents that had happened in their assembly plants. The adjustments in employee-related disclosures made by the EMS firms as a legitimation strategy can be seen as a rhetoric device of impression management or a form of symbolic legitimation to persuade society to restore their legitimacy status. Further, overall hedging was more frequently used in spoken than written language, which suggests that rhetorical hedging in written narratives is more likely to be a deliberate choice of tactics to influence stakeholder perceptions and thereby manage corporate legitimacy.Originality/valueThe study introduces a new analytical technique, linguistic hedging, into the CSR literature. This enriches research methods used in this field, providing more compelling insights into the relationship between the use of language and CSR narratives in the process of corporate legitimation of employee-related practices. This study thus provides a platform for future computational-linguistics studies in the field of CSR.

Does designing environmental sustainability disclosure quality measures make a difference?

AbstractAssessing the quality of information disclosed by companies is a complex task. Accounting studies usually rely on analysing the content of corporate reports using measures to obtain a proxy for the information reported by companies. However, there is no consensus about the best design for these measures. The objective of the current paper is to investigate if there are significant differences in the results generated from seven alternative measures for assessing the quality of FTSE100 environmental sustainability reporting. Seven measures/indices have been used to assess disclosure quality. The three unidimensional measures include two “quantity measures” and one “scope measure” that measure the volume and width/coverage of information, respectively. Three compound measures are adopted from the literature, and the final measure is a multidimensional quality model, based on the results of a questionnaire ascertaining the perceptions of 86 preparers and 177 users of annual report (AR) and/stand‐alone corporate responsibility report (CRR). Although the results of the empirical analysis indicate that the measures are significantly correlated, the choice of a specific method can result in the very different ranking of companies. The evidence presented indicates that the choice of measure is of key importance.

Changes in Corporate Responsibility Reporting in Malaysia

Changes in Corporate Responsibility Reporting in Malaysia

Structure of Corporate Responsibility Reporting in Polish Organisations

Purpose: Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has a long history, dating back to the 1950s and undergoing since than many changes. Although environmental responsibility is one of its fundamental paradigms, there are also other dimensions, which constitute CSR: the social dimension, focusing on people and the economic dimension. Studies suggest that organisations tend to a selective disclosure of non-financial information. This may lead to disparities in the nature of non-financial information disclosed. Therefore, the main aim of this paper is to determine the structure of CSR information disclosed by Polish organisations. Design/methodology/approach: The analysis has been conducted on organisations listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange. For this purpose sustainability reports made available by the organisations have been analysed using the Global Reporting Initiative Guidelines. The data has been analysed using descriptive statistics. Findings: The analysis shows, that organisations disclose non-financial information most specific in the category General Standard Disclosure. Within the category Specific Standard Disclosure, organisations are most likely to disclose social information followed by environmental information and economic information. However, within social information the disclosure level is not even. Most specific information is being disclosed in regard to the Labour Practices and Decent Work categories, while only a few organisations disclose Human Rights information. Research and practical limitations/implications: Due to the low number of organisations disclosing non-financial information in general, the results presented in this paper must be treated with caution, especially in regard to the attempt to show the structure of CSR reporting in particular industries. The practical implications of the results include the presentation of existing disparities within CSR reporting and thus point towards reporting areas, which need to be approached with more attention. Originality/value: Previous research relating to the disclosure of non-financial information focused mainly on selected industries. This paper evaluates CSR reporting in regard to all organisations listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange. Furthermore, previous research analysed mostly the disclosure level in selected categories, without showing the relation between the disclosure levels in all categories. Paper type: Research paper.

CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY DALAM PEMIKIRAN BUDAYA JAWA BERDIMENSI “HAMEMAYU HAYUNING BAWANA” (Pendekatan Studi Hermeneutika)

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is a phenomenon and strategy that companies use to accommodate the needs from stakeholder interests. This program is a form of corporate responsibility to reduce social disturbance and is believed to improve the relationship between humans, nature and God. The purpose of this article is to reveal the meaning that social and environmental accounting can be viewed in the perspective of Hamemayu Hayuning Bawana, a corporate social responsibility (CSR) program as a form of corporate responsibility report on the environment, education and social activities to achieve perfection of life of the company. The hermeneutical study approach is a method of this research used to reveal the meaning of the text of Javanese philosophy Hamemyu Hayuning Bawana. The concept of Cororate Social Responsibility is part of a form of alignment of life for social activities in achieving perfection of life in accordance with the philosophy of Hamemayu Hayuning Bawana.Keyword: Corporate Social Responsibility, Cultural Thought Java, Hamemayu Hayuning Bawana, Hermeneutics Approach