Communicating CSR Practices via CSR Reports: A comparative study on European and Asia-Pacific Airlines

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) plays an essential role in the airline industry. CSR report is an important channel to present the value of a corporation and to create a better engagement with stakeholders. The outbreak of major social incidents (e.g. labour strike, privacy leakage) in recent years has put the industry under spotlight. However, studies related to the social dimension of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) Standards in aviation are limited. To fill the gap, this study explores the social themes of CSR practices between European and Asia-Pacific based airlines. Quantitative content analysis is employed for analysing and comparing the CSR themes in CSR reports in 2017. The results show that local community was the most-adopted theme while non-discrimination was the least-reported theme in both regions in 2017. Opposing to the previous study, the Asia-Pacific airlines have grown more attention on CSR reporting with richer contents. This paper informs both academics and practitioners on the differences and changes of social dimension of sustainability between European and Asia-Pacific aviation industry.