Evaluating the corporate environmental profile by analyzing corporate social responsibility reports

The environmental dimension of corporate sustainability is a key factor in firms’ success and viability. This implies that firms put emphasis on resource conservation strategies in order to protect their financial position. In recent years, the environmental aspects of firms have been examined with respect to their corporate environmental profile. This paper proposes a new approach for assessing the corporate environmental profile in light of environmental management practices, the environmental performance and reporting practices. To do so, a flexible benchmarking–scoring methodology was developed. It is based on a set of well-defined indexes and environmental indicators proposed by the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) in order to assess information published in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) reports. A sample of firms was used to test the proposed methodology so as to highlight its advantages and disadvantages.