Are companies as socially responsible as they claim? An accounting approach

Abstract

Globalization has introduced a lot of changes in production systems of companies at international level. The decentralization of production has ignited a debate in certain sectors of society about how companies act when they engage with their stakeholders. A large number of companies have implemented Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) policies in order to respond to new challenges that arise. However, there is a commonly held opinion that these policies are sometimes used as a measure to preserve exclusively the image of those companies. This paper attempts to analyse, based on commonly accepted criteria, if the information supplied by the company Inditex regarding the CSR is sufficient to evaluate its market behaviour and to assess its level of sustainability.