Sustainability Reporting as a Tool to Improve Transparency towards Stakeholders. Exploring Reporting Practices in the Imaging Industry

The complexity that characterizes the international competitive system has enhanced the call for transparent reporting and the dissemination of information concerning social and environmental impact being implemented by firm. Recently, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology was developed in order to respond to the specific needs to measure the environmental impact of firm’s products and processes in terms of resources consumption and pollution along their entire life cycle. This study can contribute to strengthening of the understanding, to promote discussion on the current state of the art of sustainability reports and to verify the development of the tools of corporate sustainability management to assess the environmental and social impact, in particular in the imaging industry. The paper proceeds as follows. First, it examines the literature on the sustainability reporting, corporate reputation as an intangible asset. Second, after the literature review it provides a descriptive and critical knowledge linking LCA, corporate reputation and sustainability reporting. Finally, the attention will be focused on the analysis of Canon, Epson, Nikon and Sony’s sustainability reports in order to better understand if sustainability reporting tools based on LCA approach are useful to improve transparency towards stakeholders and if these tools are suitable to generate value and improve corporate reputation. Conclusions and implications for further research will end the paper.