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Reporting on sustainability and HRM:a comparative study of sustainability reporting practices by the world's largest companies

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Aust, Ina [UCL] Parsa, Sepideh Roper, Ian Wagner, Marcus Muller-Camen, Michael

As a response to the growing public awareness on the importance of organisational contributions to sustainable development, there is an increased incentive for corporations to report on their sustainability activities. In parallel with this has been the development of ‘Sustainable HRM’ which embraces a growing body of practitioner and academic literature connecting the notions of corporate sustainability to HRM. The aim of this article is to analyse corporate sustainability reporting amongst the world’s largest companies and to assess the HRM aspects of sustainability within these reports in comparison to environmental aspects of sustainable management and whether organisational attributes – principally country-of-origin – influences the reporting of such practices. A focus in this article is the extent to which the reporting of various aspects of sustainability may reflect dominant models of corporate governance in the country in which a company is headquartered. The findings suggest, first and against expectations, that the overall disclosure on HRM-related performance is not lower than that on environmental performance. Second, companies report more on their internal workforce compared to their external workforce. Finally, international differences, in particular those between companies headquartered in liberal market economies and coordinated market economies, are not as apparent as expected.

Document type Article de périodique (Journal article)
Access type Accès mixte
Publication date 2015
Language Anglais
Journal information "International Journal of Human Resource Management" - , p. 1-21 (2015)
Peer reviewed yes
Publisher Routledge ((United Kingdom) Abingdon)
issn 0958-5192
e-issn 1466-4399
Publication status Publié
Affiliation UCL - SSH/LouRIM - Louvain Research Institute in Management and Organizations
Keywords Comparative HRM ; Global Reporting Initiative ; Sustainability Reporting ; Sustainable HRM
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Bibliographic reference Aust, Ina ; Parsa, Sepideh ; Roper, Ian ; Wagner, Marcus ; Muller-Camen, Michael ; et. al. Reporting on sustainability and HRM:a comparative study of sustainability reporting practices by the world's largest companies. In: International Journal of Human Resource Management, , p. 1-21 (2015)
Permanent URL http://hdl.handle.net/2078.1/167725