Corporate Social Responsibility Reporting in the Netherlands An Assessment of the Transparency of the Largest Firms Theo de Bruijn and Arno Mathis CSTM – Center for Clean Technology and Environmental Policy

Why a sample of 102 companies: The sample is based on the Compendium which was published in 2004 and ranks Dutch companies based on their yearly turnover. The 102 selected companies break down to 87 ordinary companies and 15 banks and insurance companies. One reason for two additional companies is that that Dura Vermeer Groep and Connexion are interesting because they represent the two prototype styles of reporting. An additional reason is that originally we included 105 companies (90 ordinary companies and 15 banks) to make sure we had a sample of at least 100 companies in case we had to delete a few cases because of non-Dutch origins of companies.

Forerunner Group of Companies:   Annual reports Separate Reports Total Score Philips 9 48 57 AKZO NOBEL 17 40 ING Group 14 42 56 Heineken 38 52 Unilever 15 34 49 Shell 5 43 Numico 32 47 KLM 30 45 ASML 6 44 OCE 29

Conclusions The quality of the reporting practices is far from satisfactory yet, especially with regard to annual reports. Reporting in non-financial reports also falls short. Reporting on the economic dimension is especially weak compared to the environmental and social dimensions. Companies report fairly satisfactory concerning environmental impact (in separate non-financial reports) and ad-hoc social projects. Reporting on the utilization, implementation and performance of management systems, codes of conduct and supply chain management is generally underdeveloped and insufficient.