Abstract
Reporting on corporate social, environmental and economic responsibility has broadened widely within the last decade. The European Union is the most active region in the world in terms of sustainability reporting, largely on a voluntary basis. Most of the empirical research related to sustainability reporting in Europe has been conducted in Western European countries. In Central and Eastern Europe, only a small number of studies have focused on sustainability reporting. Little, however, is known whether how and why companies in CEE report about their corporate sustainable activities. The aim of the research project is to describe the status quo of SR in CEE, to explain some noteworthy differences between the two subsamples CEE and WE and to predict the future development of SR in the CEE region. To address this research issue, we have established a research consortium with researchers from ten Central and Eastern European Countries: Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia. Two Western European countries, Germany and Austria, have been added to the sample to enable a regional comparison.
The original version of this chapter was revised. An erratum to this chapter can be found at DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-52578-5_15
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Notes
- 1.
The directive 2013/34/EU will be replaced by the new directive 2014/95/EU. Large companies will be required to submit nonfinancial statement(s) either within the annual corporate report or as a separate filing. The new directive still provides companies with significant flexibility in tailoring nonfinancial disclosure.
- 2.
For a deeper analysis of the literature regarding SR in CEE, see Pütter (forthcoming).
- 3.
With the exception of Bulgaria.
- 4.
Only one interview was conducted in Bulgaria.
- 5.
Data sample for Bulgaria has been collected by IPRI gGmbH.
- 6.
Of course, there is a need to be careful when making general statements on a heterogeneous region like CEE. The countries of CEE are rather different in both cultural and historical aspects and also in their development; however, they share a common past.
- 7.
The Brundtland Report was produced by a commission under the chair of Gro Harlem Brundtland convoked by the United Nations in 1983. The commission’s mission was to address growing concerns “about the accelerating deterioration of the human environment and natural resources and the consequences of that deterioration for economic and social development”. The definition of this term in the report is well known and often cited as “sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”.
- 8.
The percentage of SR included in annual reports expresses the share of companies which report sustainability-related information only in annual report and not in an integrated report or a stand-alone SR.
- 9.
We distinguished here between whether a company belongs to an environmentally sensitive industry (manufacturing or energy producer) or to the other industries.
- 10.
Manufacturing and energy production.
- 11.
This also includes health, safety and environment, sustainability development or corporate responsibility departments.
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Horváth, P. et al. (2017). Sustainability Reporting in Central and Eastern European Companies: Results of an International and Empirical Study. In: Horváth, P., Pütter, J. (eds) Sustainability Reporting in Central and Eastern European Companies. MIR Series in International Business. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-52578-5_2
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