Corporate Social Responsibility and its Relevance in Sustainability Reporting

CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY
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Table of contents
TOC \h \u \z HYPERLINK "" \l "_Toc524167986"1. Relevance of the article and personal
reflection PAGEREF _Toc524167986 \h 3
2. Alternative view 5
Reference list 7
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1. Relevance of the article and personal reflection
Relevance of the article
The article has rendered focus on investigating the preference regarding regulatory and voluntary
reporting in case of non-financial reporting. Companies generally prefer approaches that are
voluntary to non-financial reporting. The recent upbringing in the time period of over 30 or more
years is integrated reporting. This is required to widen environmental and social business
influences. Much more effective and coherent approaches are promised to corporate reporting.
Integrated reporting does that by taking together sustainability, financial information and
operational data. It would provide necessary insight in relation to the topic.
As a normative theory, the theory of stakeholder can be viewed to recommend engagement of
stakeholders in order to expand a rewarding business. As a positive theory, the main focus of
classical economic theory is on profit maximization. Therefore, the main focus is not on CSR
since it has been stated that erroneous assessment conducted by organisations has given rise to
difficulties in maintenance of sustainability. Ensuring sustainability can provide the required
support for maximisation of profit which tends to be the prime focus of economic theory.
Finance theory permits little room as a business driver for dialogue with stakeholders (Ni and
Van Wart, 2015). It can only provide this so that in long-term creation of value can be justified.
As normative theories, both value-maximizing and profit-maximizing strategies of business can
be pursued with reasonable economic behaviour. It has been stated that transparency regarding
associated sustainability risks creates an impact on value creation for the business. CSR should
also provide strength to the businesses in order to increase welfare of the society.
As stated by Stubbs and Higgins (2018), big companies like Nestle, HSBC, Microsoft and many
more have effectively utilised the aspect of corporate social responsibility by incorporating both
profit maximizing and value maximizing strategies. The features such as quality and quantity of
environmental reporting as well as social reporting tend to be a critical factor. The details
provided in the documents regarding the steps undertaken to address sustainability issues is
considered vital in value creation for an organisation. It is a communication that is concise in
dealing with the prospects, governance and performance that will lead to the creation of value
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