Issues and Stakeholders of Corporate Social Responsibility Reports in Japan

Abstract:     
Being interested with Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activities in particular Japanese culture, the author pursuits to examine to which issues and stakeholder Japanese business entity stand their CSR activities for. To answer these questions, this paper examines CSR reports of 6 Japanese industries which publish their English version in pdf-format, by using content analysis. The unit of analysis is word based. Before starting to search words from each report, the author determined some keywords derived from Keidanren CSR Matrix. The matrix is published by the Nippon Keidanren (The Japan Federation of Economic Organization).

This paper describes that particular CSR-related-words can be applied to assess toward what issues and which stakeholders the companies address their CSR activities. Interesting results have found. Number of words for each report portrays a tendency that most Japan’s manufactures engage to CSR activities toward environment issue primarily, meanwhile, service industry might emphasize in information issue. As appeared in the reports environment issue contributes in building Japan’s model of practicing CSR, meanwhile corporate philanthropy becomes the least issue reported publicly.

Regarding stakeholders analysis, all industries attempt to comply with basic principle such as regulation, laws and guidelines. Other stakeholders, such as employees, business partners, community, customers, shareholders have different level of importance in each industry. It implies that different industries with their particular nature of business have different stakeholders to whom firms address their CSR activities. It has an important implication that measuring Corporate Social Performance on CSR activities should consider particular business environment of companies.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 23

Keywords: corporate social responsibility report, content analysis, stakeholder, Japan

JEL Classification: M14, O53

working papers series