Investigating the Respect of Human Rights within Corporate Social Responsibility Reporting. Evidence from the European Oil and Gas Sector

Recent collapses, corporate frauds and the crisis of investors’ confidence have moved things toward the development of ethical codes and the companies’ orientation in the direction of a more sustainable behavior, which is now building up all over the world. In 2011, United Nations (UN) claims that companies have to “seek to prevent or to mitigate adverse human rights impacts that are linked to their operations, products or services by their business relationships, even if they have not contributed to those impacts” (Guiding Principles, No. 13, p. 14). In this perspective, Human rights (HRs) principles are becoming a crucial theme in embedding sustainability issues in key company functions. Indeed, companies should be prepared to disclose actions to address their HRs impacts through a formal communication especially to affected stakeholders. The form and the frequency of this communication may provide suitable and accessible information giving an adequate measure of transparency and accountability to firms’ audiences that may be impacted or to other relevant stakeholders (i.e. investors and so on). Building on these reflections, the research question of the present study pertains the influence of firm approach about the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) reporting on firm commitment towards the safeguard of HRs. The foregoing research question is explored through six hypotheses into which the other determinants investigated are: firm profitability, corporate governance model and firm size. From an empirical standpoint, a longitudinal analysis, covering the time frame 2010-2014, is carried out on a sample of 42 European listed large-size companies operating in the oil & gas industry. Supportive empirical evidence ensues from the adoption of random effects (RE) regression models for panel data.