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Status of corporate sustainability: a content analysis of Fortune 500 companies

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  • Mehdi Amini
  • Carol C. Bienstock
  • John A. Narcum

Abstract

In order to explore and extend our understanding of corporate sustainability definitions and frameworks, we performed a content analysis of a sample of (2013) Fortune 500 companies' standalone sustainability reports using the content analysis tool, Leximancer (http://leximancer.com). Leximancer is a powerful content analysis tool that performs both conceptual and thematic analysis. In addition, Leximancer displays the results of the analyses visually, thus providing a view of the conceptual and thematic structure of the text, and enabling a researcher to quantify and display the text structure. The results of our analyses demonstrate three common themes (Business, Employees and Energy/Environment) observable across eight of the nine industries in our sample. In addition, we observed significant differences in the relative emphasis for the three common themes across industries. We believe a deeper understanding of the themes that motivate firms' sustainability efforts can enhance future research that explores relationships between organizational sustainability efforts and organizational performance.

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  • Mehdi Amini & Carol C. Bienstock & John A. Narcum, 2018. "Status of corporate sustainability: a content analysis of Fortune 500 companies," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 27(8), pages 1450-1461, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:bstrat:v:27:y:2018:i:8:p:1450-1461
    DOI: 10.1002/bse.2195
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