The impact of CSR Reporting on financial performance: A case study on IKEA
2017 (English)Independent thesis Advanced level (degree of Master (One Year)), 20 credits / 30 HE credits
Student thesis
Abstract [en]
During the last decade, changes in the business environment along with increasing pressure from stakeholders have caused voluntary disclosure on corporate social and environmental responsibility to increase substantially. The increased interest for the reporting on socially responsible activities has caused large, global companies like IKEA to incorporate these dimensions into their business strategies and transparently display the relationship between performance and impact. By large investment in conducting transparent sustainability and financial reports, companies are able to balance both achievement of financial targets and social responsibility. This thesis adds to the scarce empirical literature on the relationship between corporate sustainability performance and financial performance. The purpose of the study was to examine whether CSR reporting has any impact on the financial performance in IKEA. Relating to the importance of different stakeholder groups in terms of trust, reputation and legitimacy while fulfilling the main objective of the firm, the study was based on the stakeholder theory, legitimacy theory and profit-maximizing theory. Using a case study research methodology, the study uses sustainable and financial performance indicators for the time period 2003-2016. The empirical results show an improvement of both environmental and financial performance during the same time period. This indicates that these environmental indicators might have significant impact on the financial performance. The findings can be used to further investigate whether there exists a relationship between corporate sustainability performance and financial performance, and whether it pays for companies to be socially responsible in the long run. The conclusion of the thesis is that even though a positive impact of CSR reporting on financial performance cannot be explicitly confirmed, it is evident from the empirical findings that companies actually do benefit from CSR reporting in terms of value, that may not be able to be measured but that is valuable far beyond any measurement.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2017. , p. 65
Keywords [en]
CSR Reporting, corporate environmental performance, corporate financial performance, resource and energy efficiency, sustainable resources
National Category
Business Administration
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:hj:diva-35619ISRN: JU-IHH-FÖA-2-20170483OAI: oai:DiVA.org:hj-35619DiVA, id: diva2:1103480
Presentation
2017-05-30, B4050, Gjuterigatan 5, Jönköping, 11:00 (English)
Supervisors
Examiners
2017-06-272017-05-302017-06-27Bibliographically approved