Study: Businesses “all talk” on environmental responsibilities

When companies talk about responsibility to the environment it could be nothing more than fashionable public relations, a new report claims.

A study from BI Norwegian Business School suggests that the subject of companies’ corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports has changed over time but with little relation to a company’s actual actions.

Researcher Caroline Dale Ditley-Simonsen conducted a survey of businesses in the Financial Times’ 500 - the world’s largest companies. From 1989 to 2007 she looked at titles that organisations had chosen for their non-financial reports.

At the beginning of her research, Ditley-Simonsen found that almost all of the titles were related to “environment”. As time went on, the majority of the reports were about “sustainability”. The key word for the last few years was “responsibility”.

Ditlev-Simonsen also claims she found companies wrote reports about topics and activities “without good reason”.

These included energy conservation, health, safety and the environment (HSE), working conditions, ethics, the external environment, pollution, anti-corruption, support of non-profit organizations and the relationship to subcontractors.

Ditlev-Simonsen judged the success of the companies, following the release of reports by asking whether the words had been followed up with practical action. She also questioned whether companies were more socially responsible through changed behaviour or whether they were satisfied “just talking about corporate social responsibility”.

Ditlev-Simonsen said: “What appears as new measures within corporate social responsibility are none other than existing activities under a new name.”

“Companies are talking about and reporting on social involvement as never before. This doesn’t mean companies change their practice to become more socially responsible even though the concept has become part of a company’s vocabulary.”

A statement from BI Norwegian Business School said: “the study may indicate that corporate social responsibility is about following trends because ‘everyone else’ is reporting CSR.”

CSR has become an increasingly important tool used by businesses to indicate a company’s real or fictional values to a consumer. There is more pressure on limited resources caused by a rise in global population and growing consumer wealth and demands. This has meant that a lot of consumers want to know about the green outlook of a particular brand and the environmental implications of their day-to-day product purchases.

“Greenwashing” is a term that was first used in an essay by New York environmentalist Jay Westerveld in a 1986 essay about the recycling of hotel towels to “save the environment”. He found that the motivation of many hoteliers for environmentally conscientious acts was instead increased profit.

If a company spends more time or money advertising environmental concerns than it spends on actually implementing sustainable measures then they can be described as “greenwashing” to mislead the public into choosing their brand for ethical reasons.

Image: Sakeeb Sabakka | flickr