11. Exploring Sustainability in Spanish Companies

This chapter focuses on the analysis of the International Corporate Sustainability Barometer (ICSB) results in Spain, which is the fourteenth largest economy in the world by nominal GDP. A total of 23 Spanish listed companies have participated in the survey, representing about 4.9 % of the total number of companies involved in the ICSB project. Although the results show that Spanish companies carry out similar sustainability practices to those observed on international average, there are three main differences that should be highlighted. Firstly, environmental aspects are the main sustainability issues for Spanish companies. Secondly, a strong link is observed between sustainability issues and the core business of the Spanish companies. Thirdly, the main driver for the corporate social responsibility and sustainability performance of Spanish companies seems to be the legitimation of their activities. Evidence for this can be found with regard to corporate motivation (e.g. the strong influence of society-oriented stakeholders), implementation of sustainability management issues (which is strongly related to stakeholder demands) and use of sustainability reporting tools which are widely implemented by Spanish companies.