The Research Of Sustainability Reports Of Industry-Leading Public Corporations In China

Nowadays, a lot of drawbacks brought by the development of China's economy become increasingly obvious. The stakeholders'expectations are not likely to be satisfied if one company merely chases for its own economic profit. The concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR) emerged in this context. CSR report, which reflects a company's CSR performance in certain period, is now attaching increasingly more attention. This thesis aims at analyzing current situation of CSR reports from China's industry-leading public corporations, finding out existing problems and shortcomings, and proposing corresponding suggestions for further improvement. The analysis process of this thesis is as follows: firstly, the author selected 75 corporations as research object. Secondly, CSR report guidelines, both international and domestic ones, were studied. Thirdly, CSR reports from the 75 corporations were studied. Finally, the author revealed problems of these reports and provided relevant suggestions. The research covers such areas as quantity and length of the reports, reporting guidelines, top management message, stakeholders involved in the report, CSR-related systems/standards disclosure, report audit, and CSR specific measurable performance indicators. During the study, the author established a series of comparison standards by integrating international CSR reporting guidelines with China's local CSR specialty, and then made comparison between specific corporate CSR performance and the standards to discover problems in China's industry-leading public corporations. The primary findings are as follows: the companies adopting CSR system/standards disclose their CSR information in a more detailed manner; policy from outside institutions significantly influences the incentive of company's releasing CSR report; quality of CSR report is greatly affected by the attitude of top management; future CSR commitment was not measurable; positive information dominated the report while negative information was avoided; professional reporting audit was not fully implemented; the length of many reports was so limited that not enough information was disclosed. Based on the problems identified, suggestions were given: CSR reporting guideline must be followed; the information disclosed should be comprehensive and specific; professional report audit should be adopted; sustainability should be assimilated into the whole operation of an enterprise.