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trends and future of sustainable development - TransEco

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sustainability webpages <strong>and</strong> press releases) <strong>of</strong> the three Finnish case companies was content analysed.Several different stakeholders are mentioned in the disclosure however most <strong>of</strong> them only a few times.The most <strong>of</strong>ten mentioned stakeholders were customers, cooperative companies <strong>and</strong> employees. Somedifferences arise when comparing the top ten stakeholders mentioned in different areas <strong>of</strong> CSR <strong>and</strong>disclosure type.This analysis has a few limitations. First, only a part <strong>of</strong> the CSR disclosure was analysed. Also thetarget <strong>of</strong> analysis covered only one year <strong>of</strong> reporting. In other words, these results can be called as asnapshot <strong>of</strong> the CSR disclosure <strong>of</strong> the case companies. This limitation will be lowered during the projectwhen other parts <strong>of</strong> the CSR disclosure will be analysed as well. Also, in the <strong>future</strong> the analysis will coveryears 2007–2009 so the variation in time will be analysed. Second, limitation <strong>of</strong> the analysis is that itonly targeted the disclosure. CSR disclosure has been accused <strong>of</strong> concentrating only on the positiveissues <strong>and</strong> also <strong>of</strong> being an imago raising stunt. The positive tendency <strong>of</strong> reporting was not analysed inthe paper. However, it became very clear that the disclosure presents company’s view on the topic,especially in the case <strong>of</strong> press releases.In the previous literature, customers, employees <strong>and</strong> authorities were mentioned as importantstakeholders. In this analysis, customers, cooperative companies <strong>and</strong> employees were mentioned most<strong>of</strong>ten. Authorities were not very <strong>of</strong>ten mentioned. There are some reasons behind this difference. First,one could argue that does the pure amount <strong>of</strong> mentions relate with the importance <strong>of</strong> the stakeholder.The low amount <strong>of</strong> mentions <strong>of</strong> authorities, for example, cannot be said to imply that these companieswould not regard the authorities as an important stakeholder rather than the selected disclosures aresurely not the main disclosure channel towards the authorities.This analysis is a good starting point for the on-going project. At the same time, it argues for somefurther analysis. During the analysis, it became obvious that the corporate responsibility disclosure isonly company’s view <strong>of</strong> the CSR work <strong>and</strong> it might not be shared with the stakeholders. The project givesan interesting <strong>and</strong> important opportunity to compare the <strong>of</strong>ficial picture <strong>of</strong> CSR in the company (i.e.corporate responsibility disclosure) with the picture that the company’s internal <strong>and</strong> externalstakeholders have. Also, the content analysis will be widened in three ways. First, analysis will cover thedisclosure <strong>of</strong> the case companies from the period 2007–2009. Also, the stakeholder magazines, theannual reports <strong>and</strong> CSR policies will be added to the analysis. Second, the subthemes <strong>of</strong> the CSR will beanalysed. Third, the analysis will focus on the most <strong>of</strong>ten mentioned stakeholders from the point <strong>of</strong> view<strong>of</strong> the subthemes <strong>of</strong> CSR. Also, this preliminary analysis raises the interesting question <strong>of</strong> who are thetarget groups <strong>of</strong> the CSR disclosure <strong>and</strong> can the target groups be determined by listing <strong>and</strong> counting thementioned stakeholders?AcknowledgementsThe author wishes to thank the Tekes – the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology <strong>and</strong> Innovation(project number 770/31/2010) <strong>and</strong> the Finnish Work Environment Fund (project number 109344) forproviding the funding for the project reported in this paper.356

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