Abstrak 
Corporate Sustainability Reporting A New Approach for Stakeholder Communication
Martha Fani Cahyandito, M.Sc.
Unpad
Inggris
Unpad
A New Approach, Corporate Sustainability, Stakeholder Communication
The discussions and debates in the field of sustainability management point out that communication and transparency play an important role in demonstrating corporate responsibilities to the society. Furthermore, communication and transparency are not only considered as corporate responsibility towards the stakeholders, but communication and transparency are also considered to have a large role in building business competitiveness. One corporate communication instrument which is now gaining its popularity is the sustainability reporting. Pressures to corporation in particular multinationaland medium-sized enterprise are coming from their stakeholders who demand transparency and require information about the corporate activities in all aspects of sustainability. Despite all discussions and developed guidelines for sustainability reporting, e.g. Guidelines from the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), Institute of Ecological Economy Research/ Institute of Market Environment and Society (IÖW/imug), and World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), the next question arises: is sustainability reporting an effective communication instrument between a corporation and its stakeholders? The study at hand is an attempt to explore the effectiveness of corporate sustainability reporting as a communication instrument between a corporation and its stakeholders. The case studies were conducted with the Deutsche Telekom AG and Weleda AG – two pioneers of German industries in sustainability performances, who have been actively producing and publishing sustainability reports since years ago. The selection of Deutsche Telekom and Weleda is not designated to make a comparison between these two corporations but rather two have two representative studies from two different company sectors in Germany to see how effective can the sustainability report function as communication instrument. In exploring the effectiveness of sustainability reporting as a communication instrument, the step models of communication effects (i.e. Bruhn 2003, Kotler- Bliemel 2001, Meffert 2000, Beger et al. 1989, Kroeber-Riel 1986) and the model of communication with a sustainability report based on the two-sided communication model (i.e. Naschold 1973, Aufermann 1973, Merten 1977, Bentele 1984, Linke et al. 1996) were developed. The telephone interviews were conducted with 8 managers and 44 stakeholders of Telekom and 5 managers and 48 stakeholders of Weleda during September 2003 and January 2004 to find out how the communication with the SR in both companies work – how the managers’ understanding about the sustainability report and the stakeholders and how the stakeholders’ understanding and acceptance of the sustainability report and the company correlate to each other. Using the two-sided communication model it can be found out that there were many differences between the understanding of the company about the stakeholders and the understanding of the stakeholders about the company, and also between the understanding of the company about the sustainability report and the understanding of the stakeholders about the sustainability report such as: • Part of the stakeholders did not know the company that good and did not feel as the right addressee of the report. The degree of stakeholder trust in the company varied also. • According to the managers, sustainability report is important and has definitely more values, but part of the stakeholders did not even familiar and understood what sustainability report is. They did not know the function of sustainability report. Not all of them believed that sustainability report has more values than other reports and the interest in sustainability report was also not found in each stakeholder. • The managers have tried their best in fulfilling the desires and informationneeds of the stakeholders. Unfortunately, not all stakeholders read the report made by the company. Only a small amount of respondents who get in touch with the report, read the report completely. Part of thestakeholders could not understand the report contents easily. The stakeholders meant that the report could not completely satisfy the desires and information needs of each stakeholder and the degree of report‘ s reliability varied. These findings show that the sustainability report has not functioned effectivel as a communication instrument between a company and its stakeholders. Several things hindered the effectiveness of sustainability report as communication instrument between a company and its stakeholders. The research results point out that the main problem lies not on the report itself but the main problem lies on the reception of the report. Some reasons are for example the stakeholders did not feel as addressee of the report, not all stakeholders have a high interest in sustainability report so that they read the report only because of the upcoming interview, and what is pretty sad to find is that only a very small amount of stakeholders read the report completely. Thus, besides the report appearance and contents, the matter of reception of the report must be seriously handled by the company, because it does not matter how good and how beautiful the company makes its sustainability report or in other words even if the appearance and contents of the report fulfils 100% the desires and preferences of the stakeholders, these will bring no communication effect whatsoever if the sustainability report is not even read by the stakeholders.