Sustainability Reporting, a New Type of Companies’ Hypocrisy: Zara and Volkswagen Cases

Over the recent years, there has been increasing attention to sustainability management and reporting. Sustainability reporting is adopted by companies to communicate their impact on sustainability, and it is declined as economic, social, and environmental responsibilities. Its final goal is to depict the implementation of policies, plans, process, and products in respect of social and environmental issues. The purpose of this paper is to critically compare sustainability reporting and real practices of sustainability management by focusing on two companies. The study applies a multiple typical case study approach, namely, the cases that we will focus on are the Volkswagen emissions scandal and Zara’s unpaid labourers’ issue. After evaluating the sustainable reports and the code of conduct of the companies, we compare the discrepancies between reports and companies’ performance. The analysis of those two cases studies, and the related companies’ scandals reveals a disconcerting situation shedding light on the gap between what it has been reported and disclosed by the companies and what is the actual practices. To overcome such problems, further study on the implementation of a knowledge management strategy could drive transparency and enable effective reporting on sustainability.