A New Approach to Sustainable Reporting: Responsible Communication Between Company and Stakeholders in Conditions of Slovak Food Industry

Abstract

Companies are tasked with monitoring the progress of initiatives and disclosing information about company efforts by preparing corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports and promoting dialogue with stakeholders. Actively informing the public has become an indispensable part of responsible behavior of companies that lead their business activities in the sense of CSR. This issue is particularly important in the food sector as these businesses are involved in the production and sale of food products to final customers. Our idea connected to the title of this paper is based on the authors’ opinion that claims – idea that CSR can afford only strong multinational companies is already overcome because CSR is perceived in a wider context (environmental, social, and economic area), which ultimately mean for businesses more savings than just the additional costs. We focused mainly on the area of reporting and stakeholder involvement. The aim of the presented paper is to evaluate the level of CSR reporting toward stakeholders in the conditions of Slovak food industry. To the research are involved different sized Slovak food manufacturing companies with the aim to point out to the most significant differences between them. Part of the paper is to determine the key stakeholders, to whom the communication should be targeted. In order to achieve the formulated aim, marketing research was conducted (total number of food companies was 138; companies were from all regions of the Slovak Republic. The research outcomes confirmed that there are significant differences between different sizes of enterprises (micro, small- and medium-sized, large) in the area of sustainable reporting toward stakeholders.