Analysis of Brazilian firms’ environmental sustainability reports: Sustainability or camouflage?

Abstract

Corporative sustainability has been one of the most relevant issues at the firms’ agenda and their sustainability reports have been means of evaluating their performance and competitiveness. Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) reports are commonly used by firms in order to inform their environmental, social and economic performances. However, previous evidences of their practices seem to demonstrate that their directions are biases and their reports omit information with social and environmental equity so that there are risks of misunderstandings about their corporative performance and the impacts of their formal programs. This study aims to analyze the environmental key performance indicators of the 2009 Brazilian firms’ GRI reports. It is an archival research method with content analysis. The results indicate that in the one hand firms self-declare sustainable; on the other hand they do not inform it in their visions, there is tentative of camouflage their current indicators and they omit relevant negative information. Indeed, firms do not follow some of the GRI guideline principles. Thus, we conclude that they are still under the initial phase of the sustainable consciousness development.