Logistics Industry and Corporate Social Responsibility Reporting A closer look at involvement of UPS, FedEx and DHL on "Sustainable Development" issues

Essay by noe77University, Master'sA-, April 2004

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The logistics industry has received globally, a lot of publicity regarding the industry's attitudes on, and actions in, corporate responsibility issues. The different stakeholder groups are interested in the logistics industry's ways of action concerning these issues. The logistics industry has had to react to these new kinds of demands and questions from the stakeholders. The aim of this paper is to present the current situation on the logistics industry's level of activity on CSR, through investigating the world's leading players UPS, FedEx and DHL and their attitudes to CSR reporting. The empirical study is conducted by gathering information from the named companies' annual reports, possible environmental and social impact reports, their involvement in the international CSR initiatives such as Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) and their presence in the various sustainability indexes. The last part of the paper will try to establish the possible reasons of action or inaction by these companies on CSR issues and its implications on their corporate strategy.

Introduction

Corporate Social Responsibility and Logistics Sector

The roles and responsibilities of business in society, in particular global business, are being defined more broadly by an expanding range of stakeholders. (Bernhut 2002) The new multi-stakeholder arranged global governance frameworks are encouraging businesses to adopt the role of a 'force for positive good' in society, beyond the paradigm of 'doing no harm'. (Warhurst 2003)

After the major milestone "World Summit" in Rio in 1992, the sustainability agenda and its derivative concepts became more popular and visible. As in many new developments , major concepts of sustainability have no single definition. Neither the exact meaning of the term corporate social responsibility (CSR) nor the related terms e.g. corporate responsibility (CR) or corporate sustainability (CS) have still been agreed upon. (Marrewijk 2003; Panapanaan et al. 2003.) The European Commission (2001)...