19 th International Conference on Production Research REPORTING CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY IN THE SUPPLY CHAIN Francesco Ciliberti, Pierpaolo Pontrandolfo, Barbara Scozzi Department of Environmental Engineering and Sustainable Development, Polytechnic of Bari, Viale del Turismo 8, Taranto, Italy Abstract In this paper, the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) reports published by a sample of European Union companies are analyzed in order to investigate how CSR issues are implemented and controlled along a supply chain. In particular, the following issues have been examined: the adopted CSR standards; the principles that suppliers are requested to respect and adopt; the standard implementation process; CSR practices towards suppliers such as communication, training and monitoring; the definition of prospective corrective action plans. Since few papers in the literature have investigated CSR issues in supply chain management, the paper fills a gap in the literature. Results can also be used as a reference for managers willing to implement CSR along their supply chain. Keywords: Corporate Social Responsibility, Supply Chain, CSR report. 1 INTRODUCTION In the last years, a large number of companies have adopted a socially responsible behaviour to gain a competitive advantage [1, 2, 3]. As commercial relationships are progressively increasing in volume and relevance, and companies are moving their production activities to countries where labour costs are lower, issues related to Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) are shifting along the supply chain. Various groups of stakeholders (e.g. customers, non- governmental organizations, public institutions) are pushing on companies to adopt CSR management tools (e.g. codes of conduct, Social Accountability 8000 certification) also to monitor if and how suppliers comply with CSR standards and principles. Despite the relevance of such issues, few papers in the literature have investigated how CSR issues are implemented and controlled along a supply chain [4, 5, 6]. In this paper, the CSR reports published by a sample of European Union (EU) companies are analyzed. CSR reports are voluntarily written by companies to describe their social, environmental and economic performance. These reports are generally used to formalize a company’s position on CSR [7]. The analysis is focused on European companies because there is a strong uniformity in how they report their CSR activities [8]. The report analysis was aimed to investigate the following CSR issues in Supply Chain Management (SCM): the adopted CSR standards; the principles and standards that suppliers are requested to respect and adopt; the standard implementation process, CSR practices towards suppliers, such as communication, training and monitoring; the definition of prospective corrective action plans. As the paper fills a gap in the literature, results are useful for academicians. Results are indeed useful for managers willing to implement CSR issues along their supply chains. The paper is organized as follows. Section 2 reports a literature review on CSR and SCM, and on CSR reports. Section 3 describes the research methodology adopted, together with the criteria used to select the analyzed companies. Section 4 reports the results of the analysis of the CSR reports. Section 5 discusses the results. Finally, Section 6 provides academic and managerial insights, and reports suggestions for future research. 2 LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Corporate Social Responsibility and Supply Chain Management Despite the long history of CSR [9], applications of CSR (and sustainability) concepts to supply chains have only emerged in the last years [e.g. 4, 10, 6]. Sustainable SCM is defined as the management of supply chains where all the three dimensions of sustainability, namely the economic, the environmental, and the social ones, are taken into account [10]. When sustainable SCM principles are adopted, companies are held responsible for the social and environmental impacts arising along the supply chain. They are also demanded to integrate ecological and social aspects into the decisions and actions which involve the supply chains they belong to. Moreover, when supply chain relationships include developing countries, companies are asked to take responsibility for the well-being and performance of small upstream producers working in those countries [11]. An increased pressure by stakeholders, mainly consumers and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), is placed upon companies specifically to develop management systems across the supply chain. Such systems can also be used to transfer socially responsible behaviours along the supply chain [6]. This stands especially in developing countries, where the countervailing powers of governments and civil society are weak and poverty prevails [11]. To transfer supply chain partners socially responsible behaviours, companies can: establish written supplier requirements [12], i.e. guidelines and requirements wherein social and environmental performance suppliers are asked to pursue are reported; monitor supplier performance, to verify their compliance with the written requirements [13]; contribute to suppliers’ awareness building and training on CSR issues [14]. 2.2 CSR reports More and more companies are writing CSR reports, i.e. voluntary reports which describe relationships with stakeholders and provide interested parties with information on corporate environmental, social and economic aspects, so following the ‘triple bottom line’ approach. Perrini [8], in a survey on CSR reports published by European companies, found that, when reporting on their supply chain, companies tend to take a partnership