Sustainability initiatives and the stakeholders involved : a case study of the GOLDEN Project and the electric utility industry

Abstract

This piece of research focuses primarily on which are the main types of sustainability initiatives within the electric utility sector with direct attention on five companies being Eletrobras, Rheinisch-Westfälisches Elektrizitätswerk AG, Fortum, Copel and Edison. Additionally this research looks at the primary stakeholders who are both the drivers and recipients of these specific set of sustainability initiatives.

In order to obtain results to these questions, I examined the sustainability reports of the five aforementioned companies for years 2008 and 2014 from the GOLDEN Project database. I used qualitative content analysis as my method to establish which initiatives and stakeholders were most prevalent in the six year span. Out of the 14 possible primary initiatives both donation & funding as well as communication were the main two with the company being the main driver behind these initiatives and local communities and society being the most recorded recipient.

Having used the qualitative method of content analysis I was able to determine the primary initiatives as well the stakeholders who were the dominant factors in relation to driving the initiatives and being the main recipients. When looking at the content of the initiatives it could be argued that well researched theories in the field of Corporate Social Responsibility and sustainability reporting such as legitimacy and stakeholder theory could potentially be the factors behind initiatives such as communication and donation & funding being the primary cited forms in companies’ sustainability reports.