CSR performance of global forest products companies and IT companies

As the global economy grows rapidly, certain environmental and societal problems have become challenges. This pushes more and more global companies to integrate those concerns in their business operations, in the form of corporate social responsibility (CSR). This thesis analyzes leading global companies’ CSR performance by using forest and IT industry as comparable cases, in order to point out the strength and weakness of CSR practice, and to indicate the proposal for CSR development. The study also describes the differences in emphasizing CSR between forest industry and IT industry, and between globally and in China market. The method of content analysis is introduced to the study. Based on the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) guidelines as classification frame, relevant information from the CSR reports of analyzed sampling units was classified into corresponding indicators and then transformed into the numbers that represent companies’ CSR performance. The result of the study shows that on a global scale environmental and economic responsibilities are the mainly focused areas of CSR by global companies while companies’ performance of human rights responsibility is very poor. In the future, global companies should work harder on human rights by taking actions to analyze violent risks and prevent discrimination instead of only releasing policies. Concerning differences between industries, forest product companies emphasize economic, environmental and labor practice responsibilities much more than IT companies do. IT industry is able to learn the experience from forest industry to improve its weak areas. The other finding in the study is that nearly no global companies publish separate unit CSR reports in China or sufficient information of CSR activities in China. It indicates that CSR is still at the very beginning status in China and global companies are recommended to take more responsibility for its development.