The impact of changes in stakeholder salience on CSR activities in Russian energy firms: a contribution to the divergence / convergence debate

This empirical paper examines the drivers underpinning changes to socially-responsible behaviours in the Russian energy sector. Responding to recent requests to contextualise CSR research, we focus on the changing set of stakeholders and developments in their saliency as reflected in corporations’ CSR activities. Based on interviews with more than thirty industry professionals, our findings suggest that Russian energy companies’ CSR is strongly stakeholder driven, and organisations adapt their activities according to their dependence on the resources that these salient stakeholders possess. We challenge the proposition that CSR in Russia arises from purely endogenous, historical, paternalism or neo-paternalism. We identify stakeholders that now shape CSR in the Russian energy sector, both endogenous (institutional and contextual forces relevant to the national business system) and exogenous (relating to the organisational field of the energy industry - international by nature). We thereby contribute to the convergence / divergence debate within CSR theory by demonstrating that both national business systems and the organisational field must be taken into account when analysing the forces that shape CSR strategies in any one country

Secondary Stakeholder Influence on CSR Disclosure: An Application of Stakeholder Salience Theory

The aim of this study is to analyse how secondary stakeholders influence managerial decision-making on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) disclosure. Based on stakeholder salience theory, we empirically investigate whether differences in environmental disclosure among companies are systematically related to differences in the level of power, urgency and legitimacy of the environmental non-governmental organisations (NGOs) with which these companies are confronted. Using proprietary archival data for an international sample of 199 large companies, our results suggest that differences in environmental disclosures between companies are mainly associated with differences between their environmental stakeholders’ legitimacy. The effects of power and urgency are of an indirect nature, as they are mediated by legitimacy. This study improves our understanding of CSR disclosure by demonstrating that, next to the well-documented effect of company characteristics, stakeholder characteristics are also important. Besides, it provides scarce empirical evidence that not only primary stakeholders, but also secondary stakeholders are influential with regards to management decision-making. And more specifically, it offers insight into why some stakeholder groups are better able to influence disclosure decisions than other. The results also have important practical implications for managers of both environmental NGOs and large companies. For managers of environmental NGOs the results provide evidence of the most successful tactics for having their environmental information demands satisfied by companies. For company management the results provide insights into the most important stakeholder characteristics, on the basis of which they may develop strategies for proactively disclosing environmental information

Protect, respect, remedy, and report?:Development of human rights reporting in the context of formal institutional settings

This paper investigates the influence of formal institutions, in particular legislation,on corporate human rights (HR) reporting. We use a mixed-method approach, com-bining qualitative institutional analysis of two European countries—the Netherlandsand Switzerland—with quantitative content analysis of annual reports of 94 listedcompanies for the years 2007 to 2019 (1222 firm-years). We find that, for eachobserved book year, companies in the Netherlands are more willing to disclose HRinformation than companies in Switzerland, which we explain by their differences informal institutional development. Our results indicate that formal institutions areessential determinants in HR reporting, both in the willingness of companies to dis-close and the extensiveness of disclosure. Moreover, we observe a significant posi-tive impact of legislation on HR reporting but find that the overall compliance levelsof affected companies are low. We contribute to prior research, by providing evi-dence on the development and institutional drivers of HR reporting, a largely over-looked branch of sustainability reporting

Human rights reporting under increasing institutional pressure

In 2014, the European Union (EU) passed Directive 2014/95/EU (The Directive), requiring Public Interest Entities (PIEs) to disclose specific non-financial information in their annual reports. This study investigates how The Directive influenced sustainability reporting—in particular human rights disclosure—by taking an institutional perspective. This implies that we refrain from viewing The Directive as an isolated event, but rather as a consequence of the ongoing interaction of different forces within the institutional context. Starting from this view, we investigate how human rights disclosure has developed over the years, focussing on the institutional context in which these developments took place. We use a longitudinal research design, using content analysis to observe human rights disclosure in annual and sustainability reports during the 2002–2018 period of the Dutch financial services companies listed on the three most important Dutch stock market indexes. We find that there appears to be an increase in the extensiveness of human rights reporting after the introduction of The Directive, but that these changes in disclosure are better explained by the increasing trend over time than by The Directive itself. Our analysis of 17 years of annual reporting shows a steady linear increase in the extensiveness of human rights disclosure, with no strong deviations during the introduction of The Directive. Notwithstanding an overall increase over the years, the proportion of human rights information in both annual and sustainability reports remains fairly low

Corporate involvement in Sustainable Development Goals:Exploring the territory

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) stress the necessity of private businesses’ active participation, appealing for their creativity and innovation to create value for the common good, such as reducing poverty, eradicating hunger, and protecting biodiversity. While currently some, especially recently formed private businesses may consider the common good as their main business goal, most existing stock-listed businesses clearly do not. The question that arises is why private stock-listed businesses should voluntarily engage with such common good objectives while being principally shareholder value oriented. This study aims to map the undiscovered terrain of corporate SDG involvement as emanating from the sustainability reports of the 2000 largest stock listed businesses worldwide. The methodology is based on an exploratory two-step approach. First, using logistic and quantile regressions, potential associations between reported SDG involvement and corporation attributes are investigated quantitatively for a sample of the 2000 largest stock listed corporations worldwide. Secondly, the most extensive SDG reporters are analyzed qualitatively in order to explore what is actually disclosed. The quantitative results show that corporate involvement in the SDGs is overall still limited, and mainly associated with commitment to other sustainability-related themes and East Asian country settings, as well as company size, and corporate sustainability level. Such implies that SDG involvement is inspired by a mixture of legitimacy and institutional motives. However, when the level of involvement is analyzed, a much more scattered picture occurs. Global Compact membership is the only factor that is consistently highly significant. More importantly, qualitative scrutiny of the individual reports reveals that company involvement is largely symbolic and intentional, rather than substantive. This suggests that companies treat the SDGs, similarly to the Global Compact, as a scheme with non-committal implications, facilitating impression management and learning. This study provides an initial understanding of current corporate practice, as well as clues for theorizing this largely unexplored research field. Practically, the overall lack of meaningful SDG disclosures implies that stakeholders with an SDG interest cannot rely on sustainability reports for their decisions

Managing sustainability reporting: many ways to publish exemplary reports

Sustainability reporting is a mostly voluntary activity that has gained great adherence in the corporate world. In examining the determinants of this activity research has focused on external company factors, providing mixed results. Hence, his study concentrates on internal factors by exploring how companies manage their sustainability reporting process. Using a qualitative research design we examine the internal factors that are associated with sustainability reporting of six Dutch companies with exemplary reports, as determined by two sustainability reporting benchmarking schemes. Additionally, the reports of the case companies are content analysed and their benchmark scores are scrutinised. Results demonstrate that, despite their top ranks in the schemes, the constellations of structures, systems and processes with which sustainability reporting'is managed, varies across companies. Remarkably, for half of the sample companies sustainability (reporting) is not part of the day-to-day activities, but rather decoupled. Based on these findings, a typology of sustainability reporting is developed. The results also show that the quality assessment by the reporting schemes is inconsistent and that it is not possible to distil the reporting type from a company report. The results add to prior literature by giving insight into the internal factors underlying sustainability reporting, and how these factors interrelate. They imply that inclusion of internal organisational factors in sustainability reports will be valuable information to their users

The innovative contribution of multinational enterprises to the Sustainable Development Goals

The 2030 Agenda recognizes the role of the private sector and calls on its innovative and creative ca- pabilities to help solve sustainable development challenges. Judging by the embracement of the SDGs in sustainability reporting, this call seems to resonate. However, the extent to which companies actually make a contribution to solving SDG challenges remains unclear. This paper aims to explore this innovative contribution to the SDGs. It does so by assessing the level of SDG relevant innovation by the largest multinational enterprises in the world. We develop a method for the identification of SDG relevant patent applications, distinguishing between “green” patents, related to environmental themes, and “blue” patents, related to “improving conditions” and meeting unmet sustainable development needs. In addition, we explore whether the level of SDG relevant innovation is systematically associated with a number of company characteristics. Our results show that large MNEs have similar levels of green patents, and lower levels of blue patents, compared to smaller companies. Using regression analysis, we find that there are regional and industry- specific differences. Corporate sustainable development attributes such as Global Compact membership and sustainability reporting, are less convincingly associated. It can be concluded that MNEs play an important role in SDG relevant innovation, but that there are trade-offs between different SDGs. Some SDG relevant innovation is not commonly associated with sustainable development. This study attempts to quantify the actual effect of sustainability strategies of companies by identifying their sustainable patents and associates this to company characteristics, using a new method for sus- tainable patent identification. Moreover, SDG relevant innovation is taken beyond green innovation to include the whole range of technical innovation that is related to the broad range of SDGs