IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/corsem/v19y2012i4p228-239.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Accountability in the Value Chain: From Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) to CSR Product Declaration

Author

Listed:
  • Christofer Skaar
  • Annik Magerholm Fet

Abstract

Reporting on corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance to external stakeholders is a key element of corporate and value chain accountability. This paper identifies gaps in existing value chain reporting practices and examines options for how a CSR product declaration can be developed to address these gaps. The characteristics of six state‐of‐the‐art accountability management, reporting, and certification approaches are identified and the pairwise correlations are assessed statistically. Findings show that the overall correlation is low; there is no low‐hanging fruit for combining existing elements. Missing allocation and aggregation methods are a particular challenge, especially concerning social aspects in the value chain. Three options for a CSR product declaration based on the Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) are presented. Building on the strength of the EPD (transparency, quantification, and verification), a scientific consensus building approach is recommended. Indicator development becomes a balancing act between satisfying internal management requirements and keeping connected with the scientific development. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.

Suggested Citation

  • Christofer Skaar & Annik Magerholm Fet, 2012. "Accountability in the Value Chain: From Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) to CSR Product Declaration," Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 19(4), pages 228-239, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:corsem:v:19:y:2012:i:4:p:228-239
    DOI: 10.1002/csr.275
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1002/csr.275
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1002/csr.275?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lenzen, Manfred & Dey, Christopher J. & Murray, Shauna A., 2004. "Historical accountability and cumulative impacts: the treatment of time in corporate sustainability reporting," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(3-4), pages 237-250, December.
    2. Székely, Francisco & Knirsch, Marianna, 2005. "Responsible Leadership and Corporate Social Responsibility:: Metrics for Sustainable Performance," European Management Journal, Elsevier, vol. 23(6), pages 628-647, December.
    3. Kim Hammond & Samantha Miles, 2004. "Assessing quality assessment of corporate social reporting: UK perspectives," Accounting Forum, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 28(1), pages 61-79, March.
    4. Josef Kaenzig & Damien Friot & Myriam Saadé & Manuele Margni & Olivier Jolliet, 2011. "Using life cycle approaches to enhance the value of corporate environmental disclosures," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 20(1), pages 38-54, January.
    5. Ans Kolk, 2008. "Sustainability, accountability and corporate governance: exploring multinationals' reporting practices," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 17(1), pages 1-15, January.
    6. Evan Andrews & Pascal Lesage & Catherine Benoît & Julie Parent & Gregory Norris & Jean‐Pierre Revéret, 2009. "Life Cycle Attribute Assessment," Journal of Industrial Ecology, Yale University, vol. 13(4), pages 565-578, August.
    7. Ness, Barry & Urbel-Piirsalu, Evelin & Anderberg, Stefan & Olsson, Lennart, 2007. "Categorising tools for sustainability assessment," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(3), pages 498-508, January.
    8. Jouni Korhonen, 2003. "Should we measure corporate social responsibility?," Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 10(1), pages 25-39, March.
    9. Krajnc, Damjan & Glavic, Peter, 2005. "How to compare companies on relevant dimensions of sustainability," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 55(4), pages 551-563, December.
    10. Geoff Lamberton, 2005. "Sustainability accounting—a brief history and conceptual framework," Accounting Forum, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 29(1), pages 7-26, March.
    11. Cory Searcy & Daryl McCartney & Stanislav Karapetrovic, 2008. "Identifying priorities for action in corporate sustainable development indicator programs," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 17(2), pages 137-148, February.
    12. Foran, Barney & Lenzen, Manfred & Dey, Christopher & Bilek, Marcela, 2005. "Integrating sustainable chain management with triple bottom line accounting," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(2), pages 143-157, January.
    13. Unknown, 2005. "Forward," 2005 Conference: Slovenia in the EU - Challenges for Agriculture, Food Science and Rural Affairs, November 10-11, 2005, Moravske Toplice, Slovenia 183804, Slovenian Association of Agricultural Economists (DAES).
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Andrew Ngawenja Mzembe & Adam Lindgreen & François Maon & Joëlle Vanhamme, 2016. "Investigating the Drivers of Corporate Social Responsibility in the Global Tea Supply Chain: A Case Study of Eastern Produce Limited in Malawi," Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 23(3), pages 165-178, May.
    2. Annik Magerholm Fet & Haley Knudson, 2021. "An Approach to Sustainability Management across Systemic Levels: The Capacity-Building in Sustainability and Environmental Management Model (CapSEM-Model)," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(9), pages 1-13, April.
    3. Sartor, Marco & Orzes, Guido & Di Mauro, Carmela & Ebrahimpour, Maling & Nassimbeni, Guido, 2016. "The SA8000 social certification standard: Literature review and theory-based research agenda," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 175(C), pages 164-181.
    4. Muhammad Salman Asif & Henry Lau & Dilupa Nakandala & Youqing Fan & Hilal Hurriyet, 2022. "Case study research of green life cycle model for the evaluation and reduction of scope 3 emissions in food supply chains," Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 29(4), pages 1050-1066, July.
    5. Mauro Sciarelli & Mario Tani & Giovanni Landi & Ornella Papaluca, 2019. "The Impact of Social Responsibility Disclosure on Corporate Financial Health: Evidences from Some Italian Public Companies," International Business Research, Canadian Center of Science and Education, vol. 12(3), pages 109-122, March.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Cory Searcy, 2012. "Corporate Sustainability Performance Measurement Systems: A Review and Research Agenda," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 107(3), pages 239-253, May.
    2. Cory Searcy, 2016. "Measuring Enterprise Sustainability," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 25(2), pages 120-133, February.
    3. Joana M. Comas Martí & Ralf W. Seifert, 2013. "Assessing the Comprehensiveness of Supply Chain Environmental Strategies," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 22(5), pages 339-356, July.
    4. Figge, Frank & Hahn, Tobias & Barkemeyer, Ralf, 2014. "The If, How and Where of assessing sustainable resource use," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 105(C), pages 274-283.
    5. Carlo Carraro & Lorenza Campagnolo & Fabio Eboli & Elisa Lanzi & Ramiro Parrado & Elisa Portale, 2012. "Quantifying Sustainability: A New Approach and World Ranking," Working Papers 2012.94, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei.
    6. Castellani, V. & Sala, S., 2010. "Sustainable performance index for tourism policy development," Tourism Management, Elsevier, vol. 31(6), pages 871-880.
    7. Rodrigo Lozano, 2020. "Analysing the use of tools, initiatives, and approaches to promote sustainability in corporations," Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 27(2), pages 982-998, March.
    8. Burritt, Roger & Schaltegger, Stefan, 2014. "Accounting towards sustainability in production and supply chains," The British Accounting Review, Elsevier, vol. 46(4), pages 327-343.
    9. Pietro Lanzini & Andrea Stocchetti, 2017. "The evolution of the conceptual basis for the assessment of urban mobility sustainability impacts," Working Papers 02, Venice School of Management - Department of Management, Università Ca' Foscari Venezia.
    10. Ahi, Payman & Searcy, Cory & Jaber, Mohamad Y., 2018. "A Quantitative Approach for Assessing Sustainability Performance of Corporations," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 152(C), pages 336-346.
    11. Van den Bossche, Filip & Rogge, Nicky & Devooght, Kurt & Van Puyenbroeck, Tom, 2010. "Robust Corporate Social Responsibility investment screening," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(5), pages 1159-1169, March.
    12. Sydorovych, Olha & Wossink, Ada, 2008. "The meaning of agricultural sustainability: Evidence from a conjoint choice survey," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 98(1), pages 10-20, July.
    13. Mina Nasiri & Tero Rantala & Minna Saunila & Juhani Ukko & Hannu Rantanen, 2018. "Transition towards Sustainable Solutions: Product, Service, Technology, and Business Model," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(2), pages 1-18, January.
    14. Van den Bossche, Filip & Rogge, Nicky & Devooght, Kurt & Van Puyenbroeck , Tom, 2009. "Robust CSR Investment Screening," Working Papers 2009/05, Hogeschool-Universiteit Brussel, Faculteit Economie en Management.
    15. Susana Garrido Azevedo & Helena Carvalho & Luís M. Ferreira & João C. O. Matias, 2017. "A proposed framework to assess upstream supply chain sustainability," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 19(6), pages 2253-2273, December.
    16. Koenigsmarck, Markus & Geissdoerfer, Martin, 2023. "Shifting the Focus to Measurement: A Review of Socially Responsible Investing and Sustainability Indicators," Publications of Darmstadt Technical University, Institute for Business Studies (BWL) 136617, Darmstadt Technical University, Department of Business Administration, Economics and Law, Institute for Business Studies (BWL).
    17. Cory Searcy & Daryl McCartney & Stanislav Karapetrovic, 2007. "Sustainable development indicators for the transmission system of an electric utility," Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 14(3), pages 135-151, July.
    18. Roth, Victoria, 2021. "Talking is Silver, Doing is Gold? – The Influence of Corporate Social Responsibility on Corporate Financial Performance," Junior Management Science (JUMS), Junior Management Science e. V., vol. 6(3), pages 637-672.
    19. Erol, Ismail & Sencer, Safiye & Sari, Ramazan, 2011. "A new fuzzy multi-criteria framework for measuring sustainability performance of a supply chain," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(6), pages 1088-1100, April.
    20. Oguz Morali & Cory Searcy, 2013. "A Review of Sustainable Supply Chain Management Practices in Canada," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 117(3), pages 635-658, October.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wly:corsem:v:19:y:2012:i:4:p:228-239. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://doi.org/10.1002/(ISSN)1535-3966 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.