AUTHOR
Hjälte, Susanna; Larsson, Stina

DATE
2003-06-13

DEPARTMENT
Business Administration and Social Sciences / Industrial marketing and e-commerce

SUMMARY
We found corporate social responsibility as a very interesting subject to study. Today it is essential for multinational companies to implement corporate social responsibility in their organizations and during the last couple of years the concept has drawn great attention. This concept is not only in the spotlight for business leaders, it is also attracting the society at large.

Due to the fact that corporate social responsibility is a relatively unexplored area, we have started to explain the concept in general, then communication and reporting within the field have been described. The study has been conducted with a single case study, and our choice of multinational company was ABB due to its long experience within this field. In order to gather information, documentation and interviews were used as data collection methods.

We reached the conclusion that multinational companies highly prioritise the communication and reporting within this field. However, there is a lack of models, guidelines and standards concerning social performance, and there still exist a need for distinct measurement tools in order to assess companies’ engagement both within the social and environmental area.

ISSN 1404-5508 / ISRN LTU-SHU-EX--03/142--SE / NR 2003:142