IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/jbuset/v69y2006i4p331-354.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Corporate Social Reporting in the European Context and Human Resource Disclosures: An Analysis of Finnish Companies

Author

Listed:
  • Taru Vuontisjärvi

Abstract

This paper explores by means of content analysis the extent to which the Finnish biggest companies have adapted socially responsible reporting practices. The research focuses on Human Resource (HR) reporting and covers corporate annual reports. The criteria has been set on the basis of the analysis of the documents published at the European level in the context of corporate social responsibility (CSR), paying special attention to the European Council appeal on CSR in March 2000. As CSR is a relatively new concept in Finland, the paper also contributes to the discussion on interface between HR reporting (especially as based on measurements such as Human Resource Accounting and Intellectual Capital schools) and corporate social reporting practices. The results of the content analysis indicate that social reporting practices are still at an early stage of development in Finland. The most reported theme was ‘training and staff development’. A positive sign was that the majority also disclosed themes ‘participation and staff involvement’ and ‘employee health and well-being’. Furthermore, nearly one-third made references to their work atmosphere or job satisfaction survey. However, disclosures lacked overall consistency and comparability with each other and especially quantitative indicators were disclosed by few. Further concern was lack of information related to the theme equal opportunities and going beyond a sheer disclosure of age or gender structure. The other issues rarely disclosed were those related to employee work–life balance and integration of disadvantaged groups in the labour markets. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media, Inc. 2006

Suggested Citation

  • Taru Vuontisjärvi, 2006. "Corporate Social Reporting in the European Context and Human Resource Disclosures: An Analysis of Finnish Companies," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 69(4), pages 331-354, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:jbuset:v:69:y:2006:i:4:p:331-354
    DOI: 10.1007/s10551-006-9094-5
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s10551-006-9094-5
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s10551-006-9094-5?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Niskala, Mikael & Pretes, Michael, 1995. "Environmental reporting in Finland: A note on the use of annual reports," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 20(6), pages 457-466, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Emilio Passetti & Andrea Tenucci & Lino Cinquini & Marco Frey, 2008. "Communicating Intellectual Capital: Evidence from Social and Sustainability Reporting," Working Papers 200805, Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna of Pisa, Istituto di Management.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Nik Nazli Nik Ahmad & Noor Afzalina Mohamad, 2014. "Environmental Disclosures by the Malaysian Construction Sector: Exploring Extent and Quality," Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 21(4), pages 240-252, July.
    2. Thomas A. Tsalis & Maria Terzaki & Dimitrios Koulouriotis & Konstantinos P. Tsagarakis & Ioannis E. Nikolaou, 2023. "The nexus of United Nations' 2030 Agenda and corporate sustainability reports," Sustainable Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 31(2), pages 784-796, April.
    3. Petteri Vihervaara & Matti Kamppinen, 2009. "The ecosystem approach in corporate environmental management – expert mental models and environmental drivers in the Finnish forest industry," Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 16(2), pages 79-93, March.
    4. Radhakrishnan, Suresh & Tsang, Albert & Liu, Rubing, 2018. "A Corporate Social Responsibility Framework for Accounting Research," The International Journal of Accounting, Elsevier, vol. 53(4), pages 274-294.
    5. Pätäri, S. & Arminen, H. & Albareda, L. & Puumalainen, K. & Toppinen, A., 2017. "Student values and perceptions of corporate social responsibility in the forest industry on the road to a bioeconomy," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 85(P1), pages 201-215.
    6. Donatella Baiardi & Maria Gaia Soana, 2021. "Macroeconomic and microeconomic environmental and energy policies: are they effective for improving environmental performance of listed companies?," Working Paper series 21-17, Rimini Centre for Economic Analysis.
    7. Jason Chi‐hin Chan & Richard Welford, 2005. "Assessing corporate environmental risk in China: an evaluation of reporting activities of Hong Kong listed enterprises," Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 12(2), pages 88-104, June.
    8. Gray, Rob, 2002. "The social accounting project and Accounting Organizations and Society Privileging engagement, imaginings, new accountings and pragmatism over critique?," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 27(7), pages 687-708, October.
    9. Fernando Llena & Jose M. Moneva & Blanca Hernandez, 2007. "Environmental disclosures and compulsory accounting standards: the case of spanish annual reports," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 16(1), pages 50-63, January.
    10. Penny Sinclair & Julia Walton, 2003. "Environmental reporting within the forest and paper industry," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 12(5), pages 326-337, September.
    11. Jyrki Niskanen & Terhi Nieminen, 2001. "The objectivity of corporate environmental reporting: a study of Finnish listed firms' environmental disclosures," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 10(1), pages 29-37, January.
    12. Irene Pollach & Arno Scharl & Albert Weichselbraun, 2009. "Web content mining for comparing corporate and third‐party online reporting: a case study on solid waste management," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 18(3), pages 137-148, March.
    13. Ashcroft, Paul & Murphy Smith, L., 2008. "Impact of environmental regulation on financial reporting of pollution activity: A comparative study of U.S. and Canadian firms," Research in Accounting Regulation, Elsevier, vol. 20(C), pages 127-153.
    14. Salma Damak-Ayadi, 2006. "Analyse des facteurs explicatifs de la publication des rapports sociétaux en France," Post-Print halshs-00154184, HAL.
    15. Stephen Chen & Petra Bouvain, 2009. "Is Corporate Responsibility Converging? A Comparison of Corporate Responsibility Reporting in the USA, UK, Australia, and Germany," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 87(1), pages 299-317, April.
    16. Salma Damak-Ayadi, 2005. "Analyse des facteurs explicatifs de la publication des rapports sociétaux en France. Determinants of the corporate decision to disclose stakehoders' reports in France," Post-Print halshs-00581181, HAL.
    17. Parker, Lee D., 2011. "Twenty-one years of social and environmental accountability research: A coming of age," Accounting forum, Elsevier, vol. 35(1), pages 1-10.
    18. Tony McMurtrie, 2005. "Factors influencing the publication of social performance information: an Australian case study," Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 12(3), pages 129-143, September.
    19. Anita Jose & Shang-Mei Lee, 2007. "Environmental Reporting of Global Corporations: A Content Analysis based on Website Disclosures," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 72(4), pages 307-321, June.
    20. Donatella Baiardi & Maria Gaia Soana, 2021. "Macroeconomic and microeconomic environmental and energy policies: are they effective for improving the environmental performance of listed companies?," Working Papers 478, University of Milano-Bicocca, Department of Economics, revised Aug 2021.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:jbuset:v:69:y:2006:i:4:p:331-354. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.