Corporate social responsibility in Australia

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has become an increasingly important issue for business in recent years and has attracted corresponding levels of academic and media attention (Matten & Moon, 2008). CSR is broadly seen as an attempt by businesses to engage the wider communities in which they operate and address the sometimes divergent interests of a variety of stakeholders. Alongside this growth in activity, a number, of reporting frameworks have been created to provide templates against which companies can report their initiatives (Stigson, 2002). This paper reports on a research project that examined the CSR reporting of the top 100 companies listed on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASXl00) using 2006 company annual reports. The reports are evaluated against core elements of the U.N, Global Compact and Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) framework (UN Global Compact). The article summarises the overall pattern of CSR reporting in ASX100 as well as the level of reporting by industry and around broad environmental and social issues. The latter includes a significant number of human resources (HR) and equity issues.