Corporate social responsibility reporting in Australia's largest companies

As organizations have recognized the need to address the expectations of a wider group of stakeholders, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) reporting has become an increasingly important issue for business. During the last decade the volume of CSR reporting has increased markedly and the concept has attracted corresponding levels of academic and media attention. Alongside this growth in activity, a number of reporting frameworks have been created to provide templates against which companies can report their initiatives. This paper reports on a research project that examined the CSR reporting of the top 100 companies listed on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX100) using 2006 company annual reports. The reports are evaluated against core elements of the UN Global Compact and Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) framework. The article summarises the overall pattern of CSR reporting in the ASX100 as well as level of reporting in different industry categories and around broad environmental and social issues. The latter includes a significant number of human resources (HR) and equity issues.