Fulfilling emerging Corporate Social Responsibility expectations by the MNC's disclosure practices
Year: 2022
Type: dissertation
Abstract: This thesis explored the current reporting practices of Nordic multinational corporations (MNCs). Using sustainability reports from the 2020, eight different Nordic multinationals were analysed by using the Gioia method. The eight corporations were all top performers on the Forbes 100 list of the world’s most sustainable companies of 2020. The thesis aims to reveal to what extent these reports reflect the development and the expectations of the Corporate Social Responsibil-ity (CSR) concept. Multinational corporations reporting practices have evolved substantially during recent decades. This has been a result of multiple factors, such as legal requirements, stakeholder expectations and risk management. Most importantly, sustainability reporting provides a tool for corporations to communicate with their stakeholders. Instead of disclosing information in newsletters, blog posts or other frequent communication channels, corporations are able to align sustainability as part of their annual reporting or publish separate reports dedicated only for sustainability mat-ters. Recent academic interest has been focusing on examining what kind of external factors, such as country-of-origin effect, influence multinational corporations’ disclosure. However, little is known about how much disclosure practices reflect the expectations on CSR that have evolved around the years. These questions should be explored by learning from the MNCs that are cur-rently performing exceptionally well in CSR practices, such as Nordic MNCs. Therefore, this thesis intends to fill this gap by conducting comprehensive case study research focusing on how the expectations on CSR practices are visible in disclosure practices of eight different Nordic multinationals. In order to create a theoretical framework of the CSR concept and to answer the research question, this thesis provides an overall view on the development of modern CSR literature and recent disclosure practices. This enabled the researcher to adopt an abductive approach to the research, where theory and empirical observations are confronted in a constant manner during the research process. This thesis provides evidence that the current reporting practices of Nordic multinational corpo-rations is not following same pattern with each of the eight company. Each studied case provides different view on sustainability reporting, but certain similarities between countries can be de-tected. What is expected of the companies in terms of CSR is disclosed and several themes, such as stakeholder engagement and long-term value creation is handled in each of the reports. Mul-tinationals are acknowledging their role in societies, but they are also rising pressure towards policymakers and legislative systems to support building sustainable future. Thus, they also want to influence themselves on the expectations that they face by changing their markets.
Source: Osuva (University of Vaasa)
Author: Louhevirta, Sara
Language: English
Subfield: Strategy and Management
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7028690435