Environmental and Social Programmes and Rapidly Growing Retailers

This paper looks to provide an exploratory review of the extent to which the world’s fastest growing retailers are publicly reporting on their environmental and social commitments and programmes. The paper begins with an outline discussion of corporate environmental and social programmes and on public reporting processes. The paper draws its empirical material from the most recent information on environmental and social commitments and programmes posted on the world’s top twenty fastest growing retailers’ corporate web sites. While the majority of the world’s top twenty fastest growing retailers provide some public information on their commitment to environmental and social programmes there is marked variation in the extent, the nature and the detail of that information. The findings suggest that the integration of environmental and social programmes is not one of the hallmarks of rapidly growing retailers and in part this reflects the fact that many of the selected retailers are trading within emergent markets where price and availability are the principal factors driving consumer buying behaviour.