CSR and sustainable development: are the concepts compatible?

Jocelyn Husser (), Jean-Marc Andre, Guillaume Barbat and Véronique Lespinet-Najib ()
Additional contact information
Jocelyn Husser: CREFF - Université Montesquieu - Bordeaux 4
Jean-Marc Andre: ENSC - Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Cognitique - Institut Polytechnique de Bordeaux, IMS - Laboratoire de l'intégration, du matériau au système - UB - Université de Bordeaux - Institut Polytechnique de Bordeaux - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Bordeaux INP - Institut Polytechnique de Bordeaux, COGNITIQUE - IMS - Laboratoire de l'intégration, du matériau au système - UB - Université de Bordeaux - Institut Polytechnique de Bordeaux - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
Guillaume Barbat: Bordeaux Management School (BEM)
Véronique Lespinet-Najib: ENSC - Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Cognitique - Institut Polytechnique de Bordeaux, COGNITIQUE - IMS - Laboratoire de l'intégration, du matériau au système - UB - Université de Bordeaux - Institut Polytechnique de Bordeaux - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Bordeaux INP - Institut Polytechnique de Bordeaux, IMS - Laboratoire de l'intégration, du matériau au système - UB - Université de Bordeaux - Institut Polytechnique de Bordeaux - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: Purpose – In France, an application decree from February 2002 enumerates a series of operational indicators that companies must offer, including a number of accounting and financial items. The information expected notably includes working time organisation, gender equality, health and safety, disability policies, subcontractor arrangements, water, raw material and energy consumption and biodiversity efforts. The present study aims to account for the diversity of the social and environmental information that companies supply by focusing on three stakeholder categories: suppliers; customers; and employees. It also seeks to highlight possible variations among different sectors of activity; influence of three pillars of sustainability (economic, social and environmental); timeframe (short-term, long-term, analytical); and type of discourse (situational or action variables). Design/methodology/approach – Based on 40 French companies as a qualitative approach, the purpose of the present communication is to offer a discussion of the structuring modes applied to the information found in sustainability reports targeting stakeholders for all the companies belonging to the CAC 40 index. Findings – Mobilizing a structural contents analysis, its findings identify differentiated communications practices among the 40 companies in question. The study also unveils the existence of shorter-term approaches to sustainability action, contrasting to more long-term and/or analytical orientations. Finally, the reports in question all emphasized sustainability's " economic " dimension, with its " social " dimension being considered secondary and its " environmental " dimension coming last. This inquiry demonstrates that, in the French context, there is a far cry from corporate social responsibility (CSR) dimension and sustainable development (SD) vision. Originality/value – The paper provides an in-depth method to analyze CSR and SD reports through its structural discourse.

Keywords: Social responsibility; Disclosure; Reports; Corporate strategy; Corporate social responsibility reports; Environmental disclosure; Social disclosure; Structural analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Published in Management of Environmental Quality: An International Journal, 2012, 23 (6), pp.658-672. ⟨10.1108/14777831211262936⟩

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-01702562

DOI: 10.1108/14777831211262936

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().