CSR Report

Definition

CSR reports provide information related to a company's environmental and social activities to the wide range of stakeholders. Sustainability reports and social/environmental reports are of the same kind as CSR reports. With focus on CSR measures rising, an increasing number of companies are issuing CSR reports, which are becoming essential tools for fulfilling corporate accountability to stakeholders.

CSR reports generally cover such topics as management commitment to environmental and social CSR, environmental activities, compliance, governance, human rights, labor practices, product responsibility, contribution to society, and results from third-party audits, stakeholder meetings, and response to corporate misconduct. CSR reporting principles and reporting elements are not yet standardized, but various guidelines exist for improving the quality and accelerating prevalence of reporting. Guidelines commonly used in Japan include the Ministry of the Environment's "Environmental Reporting Guideline" and the Global Reporting Initiative's (GRI) "GRI Guideline".

In Japan, pollution problems have long made environmental topics an important issue, and Japanese companies began actively published environmental reports since the 1990s. Recently, company environmental reports have been evolving into CSR reports as the growing focus on CSR has made CSR reports a key tool for communicating and explaining company activities to stakeholders. According to the "International Survey of Corporate Responsibility Reporting" released by the University of Amsterdam and KPMG Global Sustainability Services, 80% of Japanese companies publish reports dedicated to CSR, giving Japan the highest percentage among 16 countries for the top 100 companies *1.