Corporate responsability in the fast fashion industry: how media pressure affected corporate disclosure after the collapse of Rana Plaza

• Autor(a) principal: Auke, Elise Marita Faret
• Data de Publicação: 2016
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10071/14138
• topic: Corporate social responsibility; Corporate disclosure; Rana Plaza; Media Pressure; Gestão internacional; Responsabilidade social das empresas; Edifício comercial; Meios de comunicação de massas; Bangladesh

This thesis aims to explore the reasons why companies themselves get involved in CSR initiatives and whether global news media attention has an effect on a company’s CSR disclosure and initiatives. The study draws upon legitimacy theory and media agenda-setting theory to explore the link between CSR disclosure and news coverage in the aftermath of the Rana Plaza collapse in 2013. Four global retails H&M, Walmart, Loblaw and Primark were deliberately chosen at the center of the analysis, for their different CSR profiles and their involvement in the Rana Plaza collapse. The thesis is divided into three parts; each part explores in an inductive approach CSR before, during and after the collapse of Rana Plaza. The result of the research and data analysis shows that the disclosures varied depending on the company's CSR profile. The media coverage was different depending on the company's CSR initiatives and pro-activity in relation to the collapse. One company got a substantial amount of positive media coverage, while another got a great deal of negative media attention. The result from the comparison with the disclosures shows that two companies did put effort to improve their disclosure and transparency in their disclosure of CSR activities, while the two other companies were less transparent. This research has shown how preexisting reputation determines how a company is portrayed to the public by the media when it comes to major events and that negative media pressure does not necessary make for more or better disclosures.