Business Responsibility Reports- A Case Study of ITC Ltd.

Abstract

The paper focuses on the various National/ international guidelines that exist globally on Corporate Social Responsible Behaviour. These guidelines include National Voluntary Guidelines on Social, Economic and Environmental Responsibility (NVGs), ISO 26000, GRI G3.1 Sustainability Guidelines, AccountAbility’s AA 1000 Standards and UN Global Compact. The author has tried to compare the above mentioned guidelines in order to find out the additional elements that should be included in Business Responsibility Reports to make disclosures and reporting on CSR more comprehensive.

The Business Responsibility Report of ITC Ltd. is studied and analyzed to find out the missing elements in its disclosures. The study specifically analyses the disclosures made by the company with respect to Principle 2, 4 and 9 of National Voluntary Guidelines. I have tried to analyse the disclosure made by the company on the basis of these five parameters 1) Disaggregated information 2) Sustainability quantification 3) Stakeholder engagement 4) customer engagement and 5) Consumer satisfaction.

This paper tries to find out the quality of disclosures made by ITC Ltd. in its BRR with respect to social, economic and environmental responsibilities. The main aim of the paper is to analyze the effect of social responsibility practices on different stakeholders. Does the BRR submitted by the companies as part of their Annual Reports really lead to value creation for the stakeholders? Or the reports try to create only a façade of their social responsibility practices to deceive the stakeholders? We try to lift this veil behind their reporting practices to find out their actual social behavior.