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Research on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in the Transport Sector
summary
In order to be socially responsible, a company must be always
sensitive to what the society expects of the company, and operate its
business based on the society's needs.
In this research, we analyzed about 40 CSR reports produced by major transport
companies in Japan and foreign countries. The society's expectation towards
companies varies depending on the transport modes; namely, maritime, air
or land transport. But the most important subject in all transport sectors
is undoubtedly their attitude to the protection of the global environment.
Generally speaking, transport companies are direct and major consumers
of fossil energies, so their efforts to reduce the emission of greenhouse
effect gases always attract the society's attention. Transport companies
have taken such measures as introducing more environment-friendly vehicles/vessels
and making their operation more energy-efficient, but the fact could be
more emphasized that the provision of public transport services in itself,
especially in the land transport sector, is a great contribution to a
sustainable society.
Unlike risk management, which is defensive function of a company, CSR
activities are its offensive actions. The costs incurred by CSR activities
should be considered as positive investment to enhance the company's reliability,
and CSR reports as important tools for the company's public relations.
The stakeholders of transport companies, who are at the same time potential
readers of the CSR reports, include such people as shareholders, consumers
and residents around their transport facilities. To make the reports understandable
to all these people, the sentences must be easy to read, and the lay out
must be worked out to attract them. The employees of the companies are
also important readers of the CSR reports. The reports could be used as
education tools to deepen their awareness of the company's attitude towards
the environment and other social causes.
Because most of transport-related companies in Japan are small to medium
size businesses, their initiatives are very important when we talk about
CSR in this sector. The society's expectations to small companies are
naturally different from those to large companies, so the small companies
are not necessarily requested to produce bulky CSR reports or to take
comprehensive measures. They could be encouraged to advertise a couple
of their distinctive initiatives, which might be good models for other
small companies. Even for small companies, however, the emphasis on the
global environment is essential. Public sector's assistance would be needed
to enable quantitative analysis by these small companies of the current
emission of CO2 and the effects of their efforts to reduce it.
Because CSR initiatives in the transport sector are unlikely to be linked
to short term financial benefit, it is very difficult for many transport-related
companies to be motivated to promote the measures. To encourage them to
be involved, the government is responsible to enhance the expectations
that the CSR initiatives would certainly lead to the reliability of the
company, and be linked to its long-term benefit. Although many companies
have started to acknowledge the importance of CSR, the awareness of the
concept on the side of the society or the general people is not yet sufficient.
The government agencies should take such measures as publishing best practices
and the company names on their website or initiating awarding system for
excellent companies.
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