Förändras hållbarhetsarbete när en ny reglering för hållbarhetsredovisning införs?

Abstract

A new regulation has been introduced which requires companies to inform about their work with sustainability in the annual report or in a separate report. Areas as corruption, human rights, social relations, environment and staff must be included in the report.

The purpose of the survey is primarily to find out if the companies sustainability work is affected by the new regulation, but also to identify and explain the factors that influence the companies’ actions. These factors are illustrated in a model and hypotheses are formulated for each factor. The factors are, industry, size, profitability, ownership concentration, employees and external auditing.

To test the hypothesis, a web-based questionnaire was sent out to 265 Swedish listed companies. 31 companies answered the questionnaire. The answers are presented in a descriptive analysis and a correlation analysis.

The results shows that companies’ work with the sustainability areas has become more intense in the last year, which indicated a change in sustainability efforts. Because half of the respondents considered regulation as an important motive for work with sustainability, the change assumed to some extent due to the new regulation. The conclusions are that sustainability work has changed in some areas of sustainability. However, it can not be ensured that the change is due to the new regulation.