This dissertation provides an in-depth analysis of the UK supermarket sector and its impacts on a wide range of stakeholders. It draws from corporate social responsibility and environmental reporting literature in order to develop three matrices by which to analyse the reported CSR performance of five major UK supermarkets.
The three matrices are developed from the Government's Food Industry Sustainability Strategy 2006, Business in The Community's Environmental and Social Indicators, and Defra's Environmental Key Performance Indicators; and the five supermarkets analysed are The Co-operative Group, Marks and Spencer, Sainsbury's, Tesco and Waitrose.
The analysis was undertaken in order to determine a rank order of UK supermarkets in terms of reported CSR performance; to ascertain how the selected supermarkets reported CSR performance measured up against the three matrices devised; to identify areas of good and poor performance; to assess how the CSR reports compared with research in the literature review; and to enable recommendations as to future CSR reports of the selected supermarkets to be made.
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