US companies tend to use economic terms and arguments in their CSR
communications while European companies concentrate more on issues of
‘morality’, new research has indicated.
Researchers at DePaul University in Chicago say that close textual
analysis of the sustainability reports of eight US and eight European
multinationals shows that the US companies use financial terms twice as
often as their counterparts across the water.
Laura Hartman, assistant professor of business ethics and society at
DePaul, said this was partly because ‘it’s hard to justify something in
the US if it’s not attached to a number’.
She added, however, that as corporate social responsibility was more
widely accepted in Europe, companies there feel less pressure to
justify their CSR programmes in terms of business benefits.
The companies studied included Agilent, Pitney Bowes and
Hewlett-Packard in the US, and adidas-Salomon, Deutsche Telekom and
Nokia in Europe.
DePaul University is the largest Catholic university in the US.
