They report – but how well?: A comparative study of CSR reporting by Chinese and overseas telecommunications companies

• Autor(a) principal: Renkang Huang
• Data de Publicação: 2021
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10071/23057
• topic: Corporate social responsibility; CSR Report; Telecommunication industry; Responsabilidade social corporativa; Relatório de RSC; Indústria de telecomunicações

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has been attracting increasing interest from researchers, and its disclosure is becoming a mainstream business practice. As the telecommunication industry is facing an enormous change, how the industry performs social responsibility concerns its stakeholders. Since most CSR information is reported voluntarily and not necessarily in a systematic manner, it can appear in various formats, through diverse channels and with differing characteristics. This can make these reports difficult to assess and compare yet reporting quality can affect the communication and relationship with stakeholders. To see how well Chinese companies are communicating with their stakeholders, this study assessed and compared the quality of the CSR reports of three Chinese telecommunication companies and two international companies through content analysis and a benchmark-scoring system that adapted global reporting initiative (GRI) sustainability standard. It was found that although the Chinese companies meet the basic requirements of the six principles promoted by the GRI sustainability standards, there is still room for improvement in their performance in most of these principles. In comparison with their international counterparts, the Chinese companies still lag in clarity, comparability, reliability. The study promotes several suggestions to improve the Chinese telecommunications companies’ CSR reports in the future.