Assessing the Sustainability of High-Value Brands in the IT Sector

• Main Authors: María Ángeles Alcaide, Elena De La Poza, Natividad Guadalajara
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2019-03-01
• Series: Sustainability
• Subjects: assessment; brands; open-access CSR rankings; sustainability; technology sector; level of controversy
• Online Access: http://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/6/1598

Nowadays, companies have more freedom on how they can report their corporate social responsibility (CSR) actions and outcomes, despite them being increasingly important for how investors and shareholders can obtain knowledge about companies’ non-financial aspects. This is why more importance is being attached to sustainability rankings as an additional tool to seek excellence and distinguish between companies. The main objective of the present research was to analyze the degree of similarity in sustainability valuations among the most important open-access sustainability rankings that have appeared in the last decade (Green Ranking, RepTrack, Global 100 most sustainable corporations, and Finance Yahoo Sustainability). The secondary objective was to study whether these rankings incorporated the most de facto prestigious brands, and the third objective was to learn of the influence of the level of controversy in Finance Yahoo Sustainability scores in technological companies. Our results reveal wide variability among open-access CSR rankings. Not all the most valued brands appear in the sustainability rankings, which indicates the differences between the rankings of brands and CSR rankings. Finally, the level of controversy was found to be an important aspect in companies’ CSR scores.