Toyota Nokia Gri at Toyota and Nokia

Toyota Nokia

GRI at Toyota and Nokia

The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) guidelines provide a framework to Companies on how to prepare sustainability reports.

Briefly discuss these guidelines.

The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) has successfully become established as the foremost global framework for voluntary corporate environmental and social reporting (Levy, et al., 2010). The GRI reporting process is determined to become a ubiquitous measure of an organizations performance that includes both social and environmental factors in conjunction with the traditional financial reporting metrics (Willis, 2003). The reporting framework has gone through several revisions and in 2006 the third generation (G3) was launched followed by another revision in 2011 (G3.1) (GRI, 2012). There is also a fourth generation already in the works which is scheduled to be released next year.

b. If your companies use these guidelines, the critically examine which parts they follow and which they do not follow. Suggest reasons as to why they approach their reports in this manner.

Both Nokia and Toyota have filed GRI Index reports. Of the two companies, Nokia has prepared a more readable report in which they rank their own company as a "B+" in their adherence to the provisions included in the framework (Nokia Siemens Networks, 2011). Nokia is a privately held company which makes some of the reporting requirements for the GRI not applicable to them (i.e. 4.3). Furthermore, Nokia also does not report on their use of localized policies and practices. There seems to be no significant effort to "localize" aspects of the company. This is likely due to the fact that most of their manufacturing is performed by low cost labor in foreign markets. Toyota, on the other hand, does report on their social performance in terms of various social indicators; however some of these key figures seem to be dropping (Toyota, 2010).

Figure 1 - Toyota Social Performance (Toyota, 2010)

c. If they do not follow the GRI guidelines, what approach do they use? Research their approach and indicate if other companies are using the same approach. Why do you think they prefer this approach?

It seems as if both companies do prepare reports in the GRI framework; however for internal reporting it is suspected that they use different frameworks for many of the different social and environmental metrics. For example, much of Toyota's reporting includes items that appear to be retrofitted from various CSR frameworks.

d. Based on their sustainability reports, do you think your companies have an EMA (Environmental Management Accounting) system? Explain why you think this is so.