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Measuring
Quality
of
Corporate
Sustainability
Reporting:
A
Case
Study
of
the
Automotive
Industry
Lisa Cioffi
7/29/2014
Summer I 2014

2.
Abstract:
In today’s growing international business environment, many external pressures drive
businesses to focus not only on their financial reporting, but also on other non-financial factors
that affect their business, including climate change, scarce resources, population growth, global
warming, and economic development. Throughout the US and the entire global marketplace,
companies spend much of their time and money tending to issues of corporate social
responsibility (CSR) by executing sustainability actions and reporting those results to the
businesses investors. Sustainability requires a business to focus on its interactions with the
environment and society overall so it can enhance the company’s allocation of resources while
also creating long-term worth for the business. Sustainability reports are composed by companies
and can be issued by itself, with the company’s annual reports, or even as a portion on the
company Web site. As business sustainability reporting becomes more common in the global
marketplace, it is necessary to understand how to analyze these reports accurately to make
comparisons between businesses in the same industries, and to make improvements for future
years.
Introduction
Throughout the past decade, the disclosure of non-financial information has become
prevalent across many corporations, nonprofits, and governments, however measuring the extent
to which an organization is being sustainable can be challenging. Sustainability reporting goes
beyond the traditional measures of an organization’s profits, shareholder value, and return on
investment, and includes the disclosure of the social and environmental factors as well.
Organizations have begun to acknowledge the importance of creating a balance between

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financial, social, and environmental responsibilities, otherwise known as the “triple bottom line.”
Businesses want to understand and react to social and environmental influences, impact
government regulations, as well as control risk, and provide new goods and services while
maintaining external relationships in order to build confidence and integrity. As pressure from
investors and customers increase, businesses are becoming highly encouraged to address and
report sustainability issues and risks. The number of companies that voluntarily disclose their
sustainability goals and issues continues to rise in number worldwide; therefore there is a growth
in laws and regulations that specifically mandate this type of disclosure. This paper will focus on
the evolution of sustainability reporting globally and the development and use of sustainability
reports. It will also include a case study analyzing and comparing the sustainability reports
between two well-known Japanese automotive corporations; Toyota Motor Corporation and
Honda Motor Company.
Background
Impact of Corporate Sustainability
The global sustainability agenda, as defined in the PWC Sustainability Agenda, begins
with making a commitment to incorporating social, environmental, economic and ethical factors
into a company’s strategic decision-making. Further, sustainability agenda evaluates how these
influences affect the business and its stakeholders, and what risks and opportunities these
influences show. Lastly, the sustainability agenda requests businesses to accept measures to
alleviate risks and take advantage of opportunities. In order for businesses to meet the
sustainable development requirements, these businesses have a substantial role in motivating and
capitalizing in innovation. These businesses then have to report to the decision-makers of the

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company regarding influence these nonfinancial activities influence the global sustainable
agenda. The global sustainability agenda intends to eliminate poverty, decrease discrimination,
have wide-ranging growth, and more sustainable production and consumption as the battling of
climate change endures and other environmental limitations. In order to change the way in which
societies manage their social and environmental matters depends on the information that they are
provided to help guide them to help with achieving the goals of the global sustainability agenda,
which is why corporations should be there to help guide them. Corporate sustainability reporting
is relevant to the global sustainability agenda as it is a key determinant to sustainable
development and there are guidelines that can be followed if a company so wishes to called the
Global Sustainability Reporting Guidelines, created by the Global Reporting Initiative.
The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI)
The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) is an independent, global nonprofit organization
launched in 1997 that promotes corporate sustainability activities and reporting. Its mission is to
make sustainability reporting standard practice by providing guidance and support to
organizations. The GRI provides sustainability reporting guidelines, and has published several
updated versions of these guidelines as sustainability reporting continues to grow; they are now
up to their fourth published version (G4). The GRI’s guidelines are the most widely used for
sustainability reporting around the world. There are many US organizations that produce
sustainability reports based on the GRI’s guidelines, and efforts have been underway for raising
the number of US companies that report on sustainability and for improving the quality of the
reports these companies provide. The top accounting firms, Deloitte, Ernst & Young, KPMG,
and PwC supports the efforts and guidelines of sustainability reporting provided by the GRI. The

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goal of the sustainability guidelines is to report the economic, social, and environmental
performance of firms at the same level and with the same rigor as firms do with their financial
reporting. The national government and stock exchanges have aided with this growth the past
decade by promoting sustainability reporting. In the year 2000, only 44 firms followed the
Global Reporting Initiative’s guidelines for reporting sustainability, but by 2010 that number
grew to 1,973 firms. Each year, there is an increase in the number of firms adopting the GRI’s
guidelines for reporting their sustainability information. From 2006 through 2011, acceptance of
these guidelines increased from 22 to 58 percent.
Companies Currently Producing Sustainability Reports
There are several thousand companies who now generate corporate sustainability reports,
and the number continues to grow year by year. However, even though the number continues to
increase, the number of companies who do produce corporate sustainability reports only
constitutes a small portion of global business. KPMG has reported that out of the 250 biggest
global corporations in 34 countries, approximately 95% of report their sustainability performance
currently, as compared to 2008, where only 83% did, and 64% in 2005. According to a 2011
KPMG Corporate Responsibility Reporting survey, approximately 5,800 corporate sustainability
reports which were published in that year were available in online databases, and has grown
year-by-year between 17-20% in the years 2007 through 2011. The number of reports increases
continually throughout the years, but it is still only a small portion of global business.
Hypothesis:
Since there is no specific requirement in which corporations must report on sustainability
topics, it is probable to conclude that although both Toyota and Honda are corporations a part of

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the automotive industry, their reasoning for reporting sustainability efforts and goals differ, as
well as the format in which they choose to report this information.
Methodology:
This research methodology includes gathering relevant data from specified documents
and compiling information from databases in order to analyze the data in order to heighten the
understanding of corporate sustainability reporting. The goal through this research would be to
answer some important questions, including: 1) What does corporate social responsibility mean
to companies within the automotive industry? 2) How do these automotive companies consider
corporate sustainability reporting beneficial for the corporation’s future? 3) How do the
sustainability reports from automotive corporations vary in their structure? 4) What guidelines do
these automotive corporations follow in order to distinguish themselves among each other?
To answer these questions, I have complied general information of the subject matter in
focus, corporate sustainability reporting, to frame the analysis of the actual sustainability reports
among two large automotive corporations, Honda and Toyota. The paper is of a qualitative
nature, where it will give general input on main topics and goals for corporate sustainability
reporting, and then will follow with Honda and Toyota’s participation and efforts towards
reporting on their sustainability goals. There is slight analysis of the specific percentage
improvements or failures of both these corporations; this is solely a report on the extent to which
Honda and Ford disclose their corporate sustainability reports.
Results:
What is corporate sustainability reporting?
Corporate sustainability reporting is used to provide relevant information to aid with
understanding a company’s future economic worth and influence towards creating and

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preserving a sustainable global economy through considering the company’s economic, social,
and environmental impacts. However, although we know what it is used for, there is no
universally agreed upon definition since it is still an emerging discipline. The G4 GRI
Sustainability Reporting Guidelines defines corporate sustainability reporting as “a process that
assists companies in setting goals, measuring performance and managing change towards a
sustainable global economy – one that combines long-term profitability with social responsibility
and environmental care. Sustainability reporting – mainly through but not limited to a sustainable
report, is the key platform for communicating the company’s economic, environmental, social
and governance performance, reflecting positive and negative impacts.”
They also give sustainability reporting another definition as “a firm-issued general
purpose, non-financial report that provides information to investors, stakeholders, and the
general public about the firm’s practices involving environmental, social, and governance issues
either as a stand-alone report or as part of an integrated report.”
Another perspective of the definition of corporate sustainability reporting is given by the
GoF47 charter. The understand sustainability reporting as “the disclosure of information
concerning the significant economic, social, environmental and governance impacts and
performance of a company. Sustainability reporting is a key way to assume corporate
responsibility and to demonstrate a company’s long-term economic value. We understand
corporate responsibility as the responsibility of a company for the impacts of its activities on
society and the environment, exercised through transparent and ethical behavior that contributes
to sustainable development, including the health and welfare of society.”
Corporate sustainability reporting is sometimes referred to as corporate social responsibly
reporting, even though the two reports do not exactly have the same definition. Corporate social

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responsibility reports include all of the same objectives as a sustainability report, but it also
includes and highlights the company’s relations with local, human, and natural communities and
its functioning methods, buyer concerns and public participation. You may sometimes also hear
of companies referring to their sustainability reports as Citizenship Reports. Non-financial
reporting is also used as a term to describe both corporate governance and sustainability
reporting, to differentiate that it is a counterpart to but also separation from financial reporting.
Financial performance of a company can affect the sustainability decisions; therefore you may
see financial information included in the sustainability report.
Corporate sustainability reporting communicates a company’s sustainability information
in numerous ways. Companies can report how they handle and influence social, economic,
human, and natural resources. They will also report about information by the stakeholders’
request, so that the investors can evaluate the long-term viability of the company. Corporations
also report information that helps them to assess their long-term viability by analyzing their own
operating models and activities. Companies will also disclose their positive and negative impacts
on the economy, environment, and society as a whole, and even communicate the company’s
sustainability strategies and progress that is made towards achieving goals. Corporations would
also consider disclosing their own contributions to sustainable development. A corporation can
choose the extent to which they report on sustainability, and can include, but are not limited to
the factors listed above. Corporate sustainability reporting continues to evolve over time,
especially currently with the widened use of the internet, making it easier and more convenient to
report the information to those who are interested.
Honda Motor Company refers to their corporate sustainability report as its Corporate
Social Responsibility. Honda’s CSR initiatives are based on the company’s philosophy. Their

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philosophy is founded on three joys which are creating, selling, and buying being that the
products should be a joy to engineer, market, and purchase (Honda CSR 2013, pg. 5) The Honda
engineers experience the joy of creating recognized products that improve the quality of life and
society. As manufacturers, the Honda products are distributed to consumers through dealerships,
and those individuals who sell these vehicles should experience the joy of selling after when they
feel the pride and joy of generating income for their dealership on a product that sells well. The
final joy is those of the customers, which Honda considers the most important of all. They are
the ones who can value the product more than the manufacturers and engineers through their
daily use and devotedness to the product. Based on the Honda philosophy, the company has
hopes of sharing joy with the people of the world, and in order to pursue that goal, Honda intends
to help bring about a sustainable society through fulfilling social responsibilities, communicating
effectively with stakeholders, which includes, investors, customers, dealers, suppliers, associates,
shareholders, and communities.
Toyota Motor Corporation refers to their published work as the Sustainability Report, and
it presents its main objective as conveying Toyota’s efforts to “realize harmony with people,
societies, and the global environment, as well as a sustainable society through manufacturing.”
(Toyota Sustainability Report, 2013) Toyota’s global vision is to be rewarded with a smile
through exceeding customer expectations. They hope to give people safe and responsible means
of mobility for consumers, by focusing on quality, constant innovation, and respect for the
planet.
Reasons for Producing Corporate Sustainability Reports

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There is not one particular reason for a company to report on sustainability, and reasons
vary throughout diverse industries, mainly because each company has set forth different goals to
achieve. A brief explanation for why companies product sustainability reports includes
communicating their sustainability procedures, abiding by obligatory reporting conditions,
answering to stakeholder requests, increasing clarity and tracking growth against obligations to
sustainability.
A more specific reason for companies to produce sustainability reports is to provide a
response for the increasing demand for the companies to manage a large array of resources aside
from their financial capital and the involvement in productivity of the company, but to also
answer to compliance obligations. Sustainability reporting can be of major benefit to some
companies being that they could save on costs, simplify their access to the company’s wealth,
and recognize improvements of company performance in financial markets which leads to more
stability for the company. There are certain forces that could drive the production of corporate
sustainability reporting including obligatory stock exchange listing conditions and the voluntary
stock exchange parameters, request from stakeholders, and accessibility and prevalent use of
voluntary procedures and outlines.
Benefits of Corporate Sustainability Reporting
Not only does corporate sustainability reporting provide benefits to the reporting
organization, but also to others who show concern over corporate social responsibility issues.
There should be a focus on enduring strategy, control and forecasting, improved threat and
opportunity consciousness and enhanced benchmarking and clarity. Sustainability reporting can
create internal and external benefits for the reporting company and others, some of which include
a better appreciation of the link between financial and non-financial information and their

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performance, support for control and liability on sustainability goals, decreasing expenses and
improving efficiencies, reduction of risk related to environmental, social, and governance
failures, comparing internal performance amongst companies and sectors, changing undesirable
environmental, social, and governance influences, improving status and brand loyalty,
constructing affiliations with investors, and demonstrations of how the company is influenced
and can influence anticipations of sustainable development.
Information Included in Sustainability Reports
Sustainability reporting includes a large array of information regarding social,
environmental, economic, and governance affairs. When viewing sustainability reports
throughout time, they are used as a guide to putting the positive and negative aspects of the
company into context year after year. If a company sets forth providing sustainability reports
each year, it illustrates their continuing dedication to the issue of sustainability. There is no set
format or content for corporate sustainability reporting which allows a company to report
information that is relevant to them and to their stakeholders. Some of the subjects you may see
reported can include utilization of non-financial resources including energy, fossil fuels, water,
forestry crops, etc. It is also likely that a company will report about the production of waste and
pollutants which can be harmful to the environment, including sending waste off to landfills,
greenhouse gas emissions, and the discharge of waste water, etc. Climate change, shortage of
resources, new product demands, etc. are also subjects that companies could include in their
sustainability reports regarding the risks and opportunities associated with any. Companies also
can include information about times in which they have participated working with local
community groups in order to achieve beneficial outcomes in those societies. Any strategy or
attitude taken on matters concerning corporate sustainability is likely to appear in a corporate

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sustainability report, and also the corporation’s innovative ideas to create goods and services to
uphold the sustainability agenda. Other subjects that could be included in sustainability reports
are those of corporate governance, human resources management, social issues, and anti-
corruption policies, etc.
Information Honda Includes in their CSR Report 2013
Honda includes in its CSR Report for 2013 their communication with society,
environmental initiatives, corporate governance, and shareholder and investor information.
Honda interacts with society through efforts to maximize customer satisfaction. They approach
dealers about creating and maintaining the trust of Honda customers through the quality of
service at purchase, to continuing quality after purchase. Honda’s Customer Service Operation is
designed to enhance worldwide customer satisfaction by offering friendly, timely, reliable,
affordable, and convenient service for their customers. Honda holds meetings and events
regularly in order to enhance the with each region while still keeping a strong focus on creating
and maintaining an environment where dealers can address customer satisfaction improvements
more effectively and efficiently. Honda mainly interacts with society through the input received
from dealers, who distribute customer satisfaction surveys to consumers. The other way in which
they communicate with society is with The Customer Relations Center which is made available
through dialing for consumers to inquire to the corporation, and it is where all of their
satisfaction surveys take place.
Honda is involved in several environmental initiatives throughout six-regions of the
globe with the goal of reducing their environmental footprint worldwide because they are aware
of their impact they could have on it. They have established CO2 emission reduction targets for
all production, and plan to provide by 2020, “good products to customers, with speed,

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affordability, and low CO2 emissions.” They also make efforts worldwide to address
environmental issues of climate change, energy problems, etc. This is all of the information that
Honda discloses in their CSR Report in 2013, and although there are increasing pressures for
corporations for report their environmental impacts, Honda currently does not, but has plans to
disclose this information by region for future years.
Honda discloses their corporate governance information and considers it a key
managerial issue that requires focus on increasing shareholder, investor, customer, and general
public’s trust in order to be the company society expects it to be. This section is sorted into three
sub-topics of their approach to corporate governance, risk management, and compliance. Each of
these topics relates back to the goal of increasing trust while mapping out structures for how they
plan to manage and accomplish this goal.
Lastly, of the main issues usually presented in sustainability reports, Honda included
beneficial information for stakeholders and investors of their corporation in their CSR Report for
2013. This is probably the most widely looked at portion of this report since, stakeholders are
mainly the individuals reading these reports, and it is in their best interest to focus their attention
on this section so they can understand how they are benefiting or not from the economic
decisions of this company. In this section, Honda includes a brief history of Honda on stock
exchanges. It then moves on to inform shareholders of how Honda protects their rights by
providing forums for communication among individuals, as well as holding meetings, and
hosting seminars to promote close dialogue among stakeholders and the company. And the final
section refers to Honda’s communications with stakeholders, through hosting annual meetings
where the company discloses vital company information as clearly as possible presentation style.

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This type of atmosphere also allows stakeholders to directly ask Honda’s financial
representatives questions and receive the highest level of a response.
Information in the 2013 Toyota Sustainability Report
As does Honda, Toyota Motor Corporation also includes in their 2013 Sustainability
Report topics on environmental initiatives both in cars and communities, creating the future
society, corporate governance, and financial information. Toyota’s environmental initiatives
must be of high significance to them since they have two sections pertaining to the subject,
giving a more specific focus on initiatives for their cars as well as for society overall. Toyota is
currently in pursuit of the ultimate Eco-car due to the limited amount of fossil fuels available for
use. They plan to create conventional and hybrid vehicles utilizing alternative fuel sources such
as gas fuel, electricity, and hydrogen, and they expect to see increases in the usage of these
vehicles based on customer needs and requirements. Then moving forward into the
environmental initiatives in communities, Toyota defines its Environmental Action Plan to
contribute to a low-carbon society through significantly reducing GHG emissions, contributing
to a recycling-based society by enhancing recycling of resources, and protect the environment
while contributing to a harmony with nature society. (Toyota Sustainability Report 2013, pg. 34)
This section then expands on each of Toyota’s plans of action, mainly through illustrations and
graphs with explanations.
The next main section of the sustainability report is engaging with society, and Toyota’s
current initiative is to create a better future for society. Toyota collaborates with local
communities, governments, corporations, and academic circles to help realize a sustainable
society where all individuals are happy. Building environmentally thoughtful communities so

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people can connect more openly and building robots made to improve the quality of life, are
among some of the major innovations for creating a better future for society.
Corporate governance is the next major area Toyota reports on. This section has a large
portion of explanations on it rather than charts and images to help explain the goals. The reason
why is that Toyota has established a position where stable long-term growth is of one of their top
priority management issues, and this can be achieved through building positive relationships
with Toyota’s stakeholders. The company illustrates their system for ensuring appropriate
management, as well as their basic approach to internal controls. In order to grasp a tight hold on
risk, Toyota created a Risk Management Committee in 2010. Toyota shows how this committee
is organized and how it was implemented into their corporation, and even provides the actions
the team takes to combat risks. Toyota has enlisted its philosophy on compliance in its Guiding
Principles, and the sustainability report touches upon checking activities to enhance compliance,
education and training to ensure through compliance, corruption preventive measures, and their
compliance hotline.
The final focus of a sustainability report that Toyota discloses information is the financial
section where they give shareholders all of the relevant information they need in order to prompt
decision-making. Toyota provides these stakeholders with the company’s three key priorities of
their financial strategy along with explanations of each, which are growth, efficiency, and
stability. They also provide a summary of their business results for the year they are reporting in,
while providing graphs and charts of their performance data, including net income, vehicle
production, vehicle sales, net revenues, and capital expenditures.
Guiding Principles for Sustainability Reporting

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There are principles set in place to help guide and influence the production of corporate
sustainability reports in order to encourage specific outcomes including clarity and liability,
stability and impartiality, consistency and comparability, accuracy and entirety, timeliness,
clarity and understandability, reliability, flexibility, building on existing reporting frameworks,
materiality, linking reporting and action, investor receptiveness, and most importantly making
reporting attainable and useful for any business.
For any report a company makes public, you want them to be clearly written and
understandable so that anyone can make use of the information without difficulties. The
information being reported should reflect both the positive and negative aspects of the
corporation’s performance and should be written in an honest manner where it is perceived either
favorably or unfavorably by the individual reading the report. Each time a report is created year
by year, the information should be provided in a consistent manner with the same policies and
procedures for an individual company or a group of entities. While providing consistent reports,
it facilitates comparability among these reports allowing users to identify similarities and
differences between the sets of information based on the quality of which it is presented.
Comparability aids in presentation assessment and benchmarking. Sustainability reporting should
be precise and comprehensive to the extent where it guarantees that the stated information is
adequately correct in order to allow accurate assessments of a company’s performance. Accurate
information is that of which procedures and constraints are utilized to decrease the threat of
misstated information. The information is comprehensive when adequate detail is delivered to
assist readers in grasping the environment and grade of oversights, approximations, postulations,
and reservations. Sustainability reports should be provided in a timely manner on a regular basis

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in order to verify that the information is dispersed among individuals and decision-makers so
they have the capability to make decisions at appropriate times.
Sustainability reports should provide individuals with understandable, available, and
practical information. Understandable information uses well-defined terms, recognizable
language, and the essential quantity of detail, including usage of diagrams to assist in the
individuals’ comprehension. The sustainability reports should provide individuals with reliable
information that is supported by evidence and internal controls. The information on these reports
should be in sync with the monitored information and is subject to assurance of information
through assessments from external sources. Companies are allowed the flexibility to choose
policies to incorporate into the corporate sustainability reports that are best suited to their
financial environment. What is also flexible about sustainability reporting is how companies can
report based on several global reporting requirements. Companies are even allowed to begin
reporting on a more basic level, but as the time progresses, the quality of the reports should also
progress. Many companies already report using guidelines provided, and it is important to
recognize if the report being analyzed is following a particular guideline. Usually when
companies do this, it means that they have found the guideline that suits them the best.
Focus on the materiality of sustainability reports is useful to encourage an emphasis on
the topics that have a direct and indirect impact on a company’s ability to generate, maintain, or
destroy their own environmental, social, and economic value, as well as those of their investors
and general society. Stakeholder receptiveness is crucial to an organization because those
relations with and commitments to stakeholders can support the progress and assessment of
sustainability policy and classifying and handling threats. Also, the idea of making reporting
achievable and practical for all businesses is a goal, and each company should not think of

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reporting their environmental, social, and economic information as a burden, but just as an added
advantage to benefit their company.
Toyota Motor Corporation’s CSR policy focuses on the contribution towards sustainable
development. Toyota aims to be “admired and trusted by society” (Toyota Sustainability Report,
2013, p 6) through making sure that all employees recognize and act upon the company’s CSR
Policy. They hope all business activity globally can contribute to balanced and prolonged
development of society and the environment, based on their Guiding Principles. Toyota complies
with local, national, and international rules and guidelines, and operates all business activities
with utmost honesty and reliability. Toyota’s focus for sustainable development is based on
mangers interactions with stakeholders with approachable and open-minded perspectives
allowing for the best communications between them.
Steps Involved in Corporate Sustainability Reporting
There are many processes that go into creating corporate sustainability reports. The first
of these steps would be to identify the appropriate obligations necessary for the particular
sustainability report. There are legislations that require certain content to be included in
sustainability reports, and it is the corporation’s responsibility to recognize, comprehend, and
conform to the relevant legislations that are in place. Another step for preparing sustainability
reports is the necessity to communicate with external stakeholders of the business. The
sustainability reports are written based on requests from these investors in order to give them a
better understanding of the company’s performance related to environmental, social, economic,
and government issues. Companies should establish relations with their stakeholders so they can
learn about the investor’s perspectives to ensure that the sustainability goals serve the investor

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needs as well as the businesses objectives for reporting. Aside from engaging with the external
stakeholders, it is also important to get internal input from those involved with the corporations
operating functions. Sustainability reports usually cover a large range of information across
many subjects, therefore it is in a company’s best interest to allow internal personnel to work
together and communicate with one another on relevant sustainability issues within certain
departments, including risk departments, health and safety, finance, human resources, etc.
Another step a corporation should take is to agree upon as to when each sustainability
report is prepared annually, as it may vary with when annual financial reports are prepared due to
availability of information required to prepare it. Thereafter, a corporation should make sure that
their sustainability decisions throughout the term correlated with the company’s vision, business
strategy, overall decision making processes, and risk evaluations. After deciding what
information the company wished to present in the corporate sustainability reports, it comes time
for the company to begin collecting their data to use. Companies should make sure that they have
the correct systems, processes, and tools available for them to receive their data accurately in
order to report correct information. Then, the companies should determine the extent to which
they choose to collect data on certain subject matters for their sustainability reports. It is then
time for companies to decide what information to report based on the reporting requirements,
engaging with stakeholders, strategizing, and collecting data. Normally the companies will use
the stakeholder’s requests as a vital guide to decide on which information to present on their
sustainability reports. Something else companies should consider to put onto their reports are
their sustainability goals. Not all companies will be able to achieve all of their sustainability
goals in the short-term, most goals take much time, and therefore it is recommended for

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corporations to present progress information on their sustainability reports to give readers a
better look at the efforts made to achieve these goals along with target outcomes and dates.
Companies should also consider disclosing the foundation, rule, or practice used to
collect, measure, and analyze their data for disclosure in their sustainability reports in order to
amplify clarity of the reported information. The next step a company should take would be to
determine the best approach for communicating their sustainability information. They can do so
by publishing their sustainability reports on websites, in a physical printed format, or even
through social media, which is becoming a useful method for relaying business information. And
lastly, the corporations should encourage stakeholders to give their input and opinion based on
the current sustainability reports in order to assist with improvements for future years.
http://www.toyota-global.com/sustainability/csr_initiatives/csr_concepts/csr_activities.html

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http://world.honda.com/CSR/concept/activities/
Conclusions:
Requirements for corporations to disclose corporate sustainability reports yearly
continually grows, however with no universal guide or set requirements, corporations are at the
leisure of disclosing whichever information they find most valuable to their own benefit. It
would be an accurate assumption that companies within the same industry and originating from
the same country would follow the same corporate sustainability reporting guidelines; however
that is not the case, as we have seen through analyzing the reports of Honda Motor Corporation
and Toyota Motor Company.
Sustainability reports should focus on four main aspects of a company, including the
social, environmental, economic, and governmental issues and advances. For the automotive
industry, environmental issues are a main concern currently, including what these companies are
doing to reduce CO2 emissions and dependence on fossil fuels, requiring less use of oil, etc.

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While analyzing Honda’s CSR Report 2013, they currently do not disclose much information
about their current environmental impacts and efforts to improve on them; all that Honda reports
is the general focus for dealing with environmental issues, and plan to report this information
within the coming years. Although Honda does report on all four major topics to include in
sustainability reports, it puts most of its emphasis on their shareholder communications rather
than their environmental impacts.
Overall, Honda’s CSR Report for 2013 provides entirely too much general information,
and tends to repeat goals hardly without expanding on processes in the works to improve on its
corporate social responsibility throughout several sections, although it is a lengthy hundred plus
page report. I would not consider this as an interactive report, being that Honda hardly provided
graphs and procedures, making this report specified towards the stakeholders more so than to
customers, even though Honda strives to be a company society wants to exist. Therefore, I do not
think that Honda’s sustainability reporting efforts are relevant to their CSR philosophy, and I
certainly believe that efforts should be made to improve on this type of non-financial reporting
so that Honda can achieve their corporate social responsibility goals in the future, and make it a
more desirable company to the global society.
Toyota’s Sustainability Report is one that should be used as an example for all
corporations in my opinion. This company clearly defines their philosophy and their plans of
actions to achieve the goals they desire. This report is about fifty pages less lengthy than the
Honda CSR Report for 2013, and it has more appeal to it. There is not a massive amount of
words just written on the page, but there are images, graphs, charts, and statistics on the pages of
this report with simple and precise explanations relating back to the relevant topic for fulfilling
the company’s goals. Just by the appearance of the report, all of the efforts that Toyota put into

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their sustainability reporting is extremely noticeable and lets the reader know that this
information is just as important as financial information is to the company.
It can be expected that one can expect to find similarities among corporations within the
same industry, for example Toyota Motor Corporation and Honda Motor Company. That did not
prove to be the case for these two companies however. Although the companies may report on
very similar subject matters, the content in these sustainability reports do not are not of the same
caliber between the two companies. Toyota distributes a better quality report with great detail
that continues to support the well thought out philosophy of the company, while Honda still
seems a bit confused on what exactly their CSR initiative philosophy is. Therefore Honda
created a poorer quality report vaguely giving much detail on programs and processes used to
achieve their CSR initiative goals.