Assessing the Sustainability of High-Value Brands in the IT Sector

Abstract

Nowadays, companies have more freedom on how they can report their corporate social responsibility (CSR) actions and outcomes, despite them being increasingly important for how investors and shareholders can obtain knowledge about companies’ non-financial aspects. This is why more importance is being attached to sustainability rankings as an additional tool to seek excellence and distinguish between companies. The main objective of the present research was to analyze the degree of similarity in sustainability valuations among the most important open-access sustainability rankings that have appeared in the last decade (Green Ranking, RepTrack, Global 100 most sustainable corporations, and Finance Yahoo Sustainability). The secondary objective was to study whether these rankings incorporated the most de facto prestigious brands, and the third objective was to learn of the influence of the level of controversy in Finance Yahoo Sustainability scores in technological companies. Our results reveal wide variability among open-access CSR rankings. Not all the most valued brands appear in the sustainability rankings, which indicates the differences between the rankings of brands and CSR rankings. Finally, the level of controversy was found to be an important aspect in companies’ CSR scores.

The impact of corporate social responsibility transparency on the financial performance, brand value, and sustainability level of IT companies

“…On the basis of these results and as other authors suggest (Chaterji & Levine, 2006; Delmas & Blass, ; Windolph, ; Alcaide et al, ), the present study reveals the need to define a regulation or standards to measure and disseminate companies' CSR actions that also promote greater sustainability transparency. This is important for financial agencies and society and is particularly relevant for investors, shareholders, and creditors who need clearer and more trustworthy indices to be able to measure companies' nonfinancial aspects.…”

“…To our knowledge, the only work that studies the free-access CSR rankings jointly was carried out by Alcaide, De La Poza, and Guadalajara (2019), who analysed the degree of similarity in the sustainability valuation among these open-access sustainability rankings. On the contrary, the private-access rankings have been included in some works (Pinillos, Fernandez-Fernandez, & Mateo, 2018;Wang, Hsieh, & Sharkis, 2018).…”

Sustainable Brand Management of Alimentary Goods

“…Moreover, dominant importance of brand loyalty in the process of sustainable brand management has been identified [46,47]. IT sector is another field where consumer's loyalty has been discussed as one of the pillars of CSR (corporate social responsibility) effectiveness [48]. Not only stating but also investigating the significance of consumer's loyalty has been the aim of the study provided in scope of luxury brands [49].…”

“…Generally, imageries have been replaced by benefits. Thus, the need of a selective approach to sustainable brand management across product categories which has been so far only assumed, has been definitely proved [45][46][47][48][49][50]52]. For detailed information, see Table 10.…”

Modelling Human Behaviour in the Digital Era: Economic and Social Impacts

“…It is interesting to observe how harmony does not often exist in the results obtained by the various indicators created for one same company. This is explained by the different algorithms used to quantify the performance of organisations [15]. Recently, many indicators have emerged that quantify customer perceptions of the products and/or services received physically or digitally.…”