Changing trends of corporate social responsibility reporting in the world-leading airlines

Abstract

The recent outbreak of major economic, environmental and social incidents (e.g. privacy leakage, corruption) has put the blooming airline industry under spotlight. However, scant studies examined the trends and changes of corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices through CSR reporting on the economic, environmental and social dimensions in the aviation industry. To fill the gap, the current study examines the economic, environmental and social themes of Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) Standards on CSR communication of the global airlines. Quantitative content analysis is adopted for analyzing and comparing the CSR themes in 105 CSR reports of 21 airlines in major leagues from 2013 to 2017. Our findings indicated a salient growing trend in CSR reporting in the economic dimension while GRI 201-Economic Performance was the most significantly reported sub-topic. Our study has also compared the CSR reporting practices between the APEC based airlines and EU based airlines. The results indicated that focus of CSR reporting was different in the two regions. This study provided a comprehensive understanding of how global airlines communicate their CSR practices and respond to stakeholders' expectations via CSR reporting. This study informs both academics and practitioners about the changing trends of CSR development and reporting in the airline industry worldwide.

The Sustainability of Academic Air Mobility in Finnish Universities

“…The results revealed a preference towards local airline carriers. This could be regarded as positive, as some studies [21,[32][33][34] show that European airlines outperform their foreign counterparts in sustainability reporting. However, the studies also pointed out that this discrepancy may result from corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting originating in Western countries, and that other regions are just beginning to catch up.…”

Communicating social responsibilities through CSR reports: Comparative study of top European and Asia-Pacific airlines

“…Then, we utilized NVivo 10, a commonly used data analysis software, to determine the function word frequency of the 19 GRI social topics in the selected airlines’ CSR reports. By filtering common and overlapping function words (e.g., guidelines, organizations, and standards) to avoid the inflation of intensity [ 10 ], we identified the keywords in each subtopic with a weighting of 0.34 or above ( Table 2 ). Keywords are considered the smallest units that provide the most essential information of the entire text [ 52 ]; hence, we examined the keywords with regard to their intensity of use (i.e., frequency) in all the collected reports by using NVivo 10.…”

“…A previous research [ 14 ] claimed that CSR is a morally required corporate behavior that is “alleged by a stakeholder to be expected by society… and is therefore justifiably demanded of business” (p. 374). Researchers generally agree that CSR is an obligation that companies must fulfill by considering social values while engaging with stakeholders [ 10 ]. In accordance with guidelines of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) [ 5 ], sustainable development has three dimensions: economic, social, and environmental objectives.…”

“…Research has also suggested that minimal attention was given to economic and social issues in the CSR reporting of Asia-Pacific airlines, while European airlines placed considerable attention [ 44 ] on just environmental issues in their CSR reports [ 37 , 41 – 45 ]. A recent study found similar practices adopted in the reporting of the economic, environmental, and social dimensions of GRI in airlines based in Europe and the Asia-Pacific [ 10 ]. Moreover, detailed investigations of the CSR reporting of social dimensions between top Asia-Pacific and European airlines remain limited.…”

“…Nonetheless, studies related to reporting the social dimension of GRI in aviation remain limited [ 10 ], particularly among top airlines in terms of international passenger traffic [ 11 ]. To fill this gap, the current work aims to explore the adoption of CSR practices via CSR reports in the social dimension between airlines based in the Asia-Pacific and in Europe.…”