Analyzing sutainability reports of global, public corporations by industrial sectors and national origins

Abstract

Due to the demand by stakeholder groups of global public corporations for greater transparency in business operations, corporations have continuously tried to embody the concept of sustainability in their business strategies and operations. That is, they have collectively published sustainability reports to state their progress toward achieving sustainability goals. However, understanding of the thematic and conceptual structures of environmental and sustainability reports of the global public corporations is still limited. In this study, the author identified key thematic attributes through text data mining analysis: (a) sustainability, (b) energy, (c) approach, (d) environmental, and (e) people for industrial sectors. Additionally, themes of (a) business, (b) employees, (c) financial, (d) energy, and (e) suppliers appeared most frequently and were the top five compounding themes for overall national origins. In fact, the majority of findings pointed out that these themes and concepts have limited environmental and climatic relevance, as they only align with certain goals, such as UN SDGs 12, 13, and 14. That is, understanding key factors of their sustainability reports is crucial toward overcoming the challenges of achieving SDGs. Furthermore, these findings in accordance with industrial sectors and national origins of the global public corporations can help to derive a more in-depth understanding of current reports on environmental and sustainability-driven business operations.