Identifying Worldviews on Corporate Sustainability: A Content Analysis of Corporate Sustainability Reports

Companies commonly issue sustainability or corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports. This study seeks to understand worldviews of corporate sustainability, or the corporate message conveyed regarding what sustainability or CSR is and how to enact it. Content analysis of corporate sustainability...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Business strategy and the environment Vol. 27; no. 1; pp. 128 - 151
Main Authors: Landrum, Nancy E., Ohsowski, Brian
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Chichester Wiley Periodicals Inc 01.01.2018
Subjects:
Business
Companies
Content analysis
corporate social responsibility (CSR)
Corpus analysis
Ecosystems
Embeddedness
Environmental science
Government regulations
Sensemaking
Social responsibility
stages of corporate sustainability
strong sustainability
Sustainability
Sustainability reporting
sustainability reports
sustainability spectrum
weak sustainability
Worldview
ISSN:0964-4733, 1099-0836
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:Companies commonly issue sustainability or corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports. This study seeks to understand worldviews of corporate sustainability, or the corporate message conveyed regarding what sustainability or CSR is and how to enact it. Content analysis of corporate sustainability reports is used to position each company report within stages of corporate sustainability. Results reveal that there are multiple coexisting worldviews of corporate sustainability, but the most dominant worldview is focused on the business case for sustainability, a position anchored in the weak sustainability paradigm. We contend that the business case and weak sustainability advanced in corporate sustainability reports and by the Global Reporting Initiative are poor representations of sustainability. Ecological embeddedness, or a locally responsive strategy that is sensitive to local ecosystems, may hold the key to improved ecological sensemaking, which in turn could lead to more mature levels of corporate sustainability worldviews that support strong sustainability and are rooted in environmental science. This must be supported by government regulation. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment
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ISSN:0964-4733
1099-0836
DOI:10.1002/bse.1989