Corporate Social Responsibility in Finland

The desire for sustainable development (SD) and its implementation within business has emerged during the past decades calling for more effective production in response to human needs in the social, economic and environmental dimensions. Institutionalization of environmental management practices was the first phase of business responsibilities. The concept of corporate social responsibilities took place in the second phase of the responsible business debate. The ongoing third phase is turning the organizational inside-out perspective to an outside-in approach (i.e. the business contributes products and services to resolve pressing sustainability issues in its society). Using the institutional organization theory as a background for the conceptual framework based on environmental management, value creation through corporate responsibility and truly sustainable business models, this paper analyses the development of corporate responsibility reporting in three Finnish large-scale companies representing the energy, grocery, and pulp and paper sectors. Evidence for the development of business strategies from environmental management towards truly sustainable business were looked at through qualitative analysis. Finnish large-scale companies have been the forerunners in the adoption of global responsibility and reporting practices. The content of the studied report was developed most intensively from the late 1990s until the mid-2000s. The content analysis demonstrated the adoption of well institutionalized managerial concepts, namely environmental management and corporate responsibility. The reports shared little evidence of the adoption of truly sustainable approaches. However, the homepages of all three companies indicate large potential for this kind of positive impact. Globally acceptable reporting frameworks provide a large set of sustainability criteria that could provide new perspectives to evaluate the sustainability of operations. This standardized reporting seldom leads to a wider consideration of the potential for value creation and the larger sustainability impacts of operations, since companies (commonly) apply the parts of the larger framework that are relevant to daily business.