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Examining GRI Sustainability Reports through the Lens of the

Stakeholder Theory

Kyle Nash

Minnesota State University, kylenashtx@gmail.com

Robin Wakefield

Baylor University, robin_wakefield@baylor.edu

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Nash, Kyle and Wakefield, Robin, "Examining GRI Sustainability Reports through the Lens of the

Stakeholder Theory" (2022). AMCIS 2022 Proceedings. 7.

https://aisel.aisnet.org/amcis2022/sig_green/sig_green/7

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Examining GRI Sustainability Reports

Twenty-eighth Americas Conference on Information Systems, Minneapolis, 2022

Examining GRI Sustainability Reports

through the Lens of the Stakeholder Theory

Completed Research

Kyle Nash

Minnesota State University, Mankato

kyle.nash@mnsu.edu

Robin L. Wakefield

Baylor University

robin_wakefield@baylor.edu

Abstract

Publishing a successful sustainability report is a rising concern among organizations seeking to meet the

expectations of their stakeholders. The purpose of this research is to examine how stakeholder engagement

influences Global Reporting Initiative’s (GRI) reporting processes. We use stakeholder theory to assert that

an organization’s sustainability practices are prompted by the demands of a variety of stakeholders. Cisco

GRI reports were chosen for analysis because in 2020 Cisco was ranked 4th amongst the global 100 most

sustainable corporations in the world. We conducted a longitudinal analysis of Cisco’s corporate social

responsibility reports from 2005 to 2020. Using text mining techniques and text statistical analysis we

identified the primary stakeholders in each year’s sustainability report and document stakeholder-related

sustainability practices. Our results demonstrate that organizational sustainability practices are a function

of the extent of engagement with core stakeholders. This study contributes to understanding how

stakeholders’ engagement relates to organizational sustainability reporting processes.

Keywords:

Global Reporting Initiative, GRI indicators, Stakeholder Theory, Cisco, Sustainability, and

Text Mining.

Introduction

Over the past two centuries, the rapid growth of the human population combined with technological

developments has placed unprecedented demands on the global environment. As a result of these pressures,

the earth is experiencing an accelerated loss of biodiversity and dramatic alterations to environmental

patterns and processes. In 1987, the topic of sustainability rose to the forefront when the World Commission

on Environment and Development (WCED) emphasized in their report that “

Humanity has the ability to

make a development sustainable – to ensure that it meets the needs of the present without compromising

the ability of future generations to meet their own needs

” (World Commission on Environment and

Development 1987). Following this declaration, organizational investing in sustainability practices and

methods accelerated. However, the lack of standardization in sustainability reporting posed a challenge for

organizations in communicating their efforts to maximize social responsibility and minimize the

environmental impact of their businesses.

Since then, several governing bodies developed guidelines for organizational sustainability reporting

practices. For example, the United Nations created a division that specializes primarily in sustainability

issues and reporting. Their reports identify and communicate critical environmental issues to raise

awareness and understanding of their implications for society, business, and governments. The most

prominent sustainability report produced is the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI). The GRI is the result of

efforts by researchers, industry, and consultants to leverage a multi-stakeholder approach from which to

address sustainability (“Global Reporting Initiative” 2020). Today, leading organizations with a clear

sustainability agenda understand how information systems’ capabilities can enable and empower

businesses’ sustainability strategies and elevate them to a high level. Every year, organizations such as

Cisco, IBM, Microsoft, and Apple document their sustainability strategies in a GRI report to highlight

corporate dedication to sustainability and to their ongoing efforts to improve the global environment.

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Twenty-eighth Americas Conference on Information Systems, Minneapolis, 2022

To address the sustainability challenge, organizations find they must work closely with their stakeholders

because stakeholders are environmentally conscious and often have expectations regarding organizational

sustainability practices. Thus, organizations must balance their profit maximizing goals with their

responsibility to protect the environment and satisfy the expectations of stakeholders. The disclosure of

organizational sustainability practices in standardized reports is the primary way that businesses inform

stakeholders and engage them in their sustainability efforts. The greater the engagement between the

organization and its stakeholders, the greater the need for the organization to disclose its sustainability

performance (Lenssen et al. 2011). Furthermore, organizations that attract stakeholders based on successful

sustainability outcomes have a responsibility to fulfill stakeholders' expectations and communicate their

environmental activities (Petrini and Pozzebon 2009). The challenge for organizations is to balance ethical,

responsible, and sustainable business practices with their capitalistic ventures (Freeman et al. 2010). Thus,

as stakeholders become more aware of organizational sustainability practices and demand greater

accountability, organizations’ engagement with stakeholders is evolving.

Our study explores how leading corporations use formal social responsibility reporting to communicate

sustainability strategy and meet stakeholder expectations. We use stakeholder theory to assert that

organizational sustainability practices are undertaken to meet the expectations of stakeholders. Our

primary research questions are: How do organizational sustainability practices change to meet the demands

of stakeholders? How are GRI reports an indicator of stakeholder engagement? We conduct a longitudinal

analysis of corporate social responsibility reports to demonstrate the evolution of sustainability practices

as a function of organizational engagement with primary stakeholders. Further, we want to understand the

relationship between stakeholders’ engagement and company revenue. Our paper is divided into several

sections. First, we present a background of the foundation for GRI indicators and stakeholder theory, prior

to discussing how GRI indicators influence the report writing process. Next, we explain the analytical

method for this study, followed by the results and discussion of the findings, limitations, and conclusion.

Background

Generally, sustainability research topics in the information systems, information technology, and

management disciplines have focused on four main themes (Sedera et al. 2017). Those themes were green

IT/IS conceptualization, green technology practices, green IT/IS adoption, and literature reviews. The

emphasis of many of these studies is on challenges posed by green IT/IS. More recently, the business focus

is on implementing IS capabilities to enable a sustainable business strategy (Boudreau et al. 2008) and

(Abraham and Dao 2017). The (Benitez-Amado and Walczuch 2012) study finds support for the argument

that IS and IT capabilities enable a proactive business strategy for sustainability. Moreover, IS/IT

capabilities may indirectly increase the organization’s performance with long-term advantage and greater

revenue. Environmentally conscious stakeholders are likely to favor organizations that appreciate

environmental sustainability and who share a similar vision of sustainability. As a result, organizations are

likely to shift sustainability priorities to attract stakeholders because sustainability continues to challenge

the global business landscape. Organizations continue to adapt and respond to growing sustainability

demands from stakeholders, the general public, and government regulators (Hu et al. 2016). Stakeholder

engagement has become a priority in the development of sustainability strategy and thus is a significant

force in organizational change.

In 1984, Freeman defined the stakeholder as “

any group or individual who can affect or is affected by the

achievement of an organization’s objectives

” (Freeman 1984). Freeman’s definition suggests a two-way

relationship between the organization and its stakeholders. With the advent of environmentalism,

stakeholder engagement for businesses became more critical (Freeman 2010) (Konar and Cohen 2001)

because stakeholders recognize their influence on organizations' decision-making (Freeman et al. 2010)

and business strategy. Engaging stakeholders via dialogue is likely to build trust and commitment as well

as promote a shared vision of organizational involvement in sustainability. Stakeholder engagement in

sustainability leads to the incorporation of sustainability principles and strategy that indirectly increases

performance and revenue (Del Giudice et al. 2021). However, stakeholder's engagement is a complex

interplay of shifting, ambiguous, and contested relationships that can affect the sustainability reporting

process because sustainability reporting activities are embedded in the stakeholder network through the

organization's policies and strategies. Because stakeholder engagement is a two-way process, the challenge

Examining GRI Sustainability Reports

Twenty-eighth Americas Conference on Information Systems, Minneapolis, 2022

for organizations is to build an engagement network that is fully understood by the stakeholders (Gao and

Zhang 2006).

Stakeholders often pressure the sustainability strategy of organizations to reduce negative impacts on the

environment while simultaneously increasing positive impact on production (Sarkis et al.

2011). Consequently, an organization needs a sustainability network team dedicated to scripting a GRI

report that addresses the variety of expectations held by a diverse set of stakeholders. This process takes

time and a clear understanding of stakeholders’ objectives and how the organization’s sustainability

strategy addresses the diversity of goals. The focus of stakeholder theory is on recognizing the unique

relationships between an organization and a diverse set of stakeholders to create value for all stakeholders.

We identify four types of stakeholders whose goals intertwine with organizations and their sustainability

strategies. These include

customer(s)

employee(s)

society

, and the

environment(al)

Customer(s)

refers to the characteristic group of individuals that transacts with an organization to receive

a product or service and whose transaction behavior conveys a right to influence the organizations’ practices

and methods. This involves the customers as a group who are recipients of the business’ benefits and who

influence standard practices in the industry (Friedman and Miles 2006) (Gadenne et al. 2009)(Ogden and

Watson 1999).

Employee(s)

address the dimension of personnel, individual contractors, and management

teams as critical assets in maintaining and delivering the long-term value of the business (Lynch-Fannon

2004) (Friedman and Miles 2006).

Society

refers to the larger social setting that permits the organization

to function in return for social benefits (Friedman and Miles 2006) (Freeman 1984). As for

the

environment(al)

stakeholder group, the story is different and complicated because ‘the environment’ is

an ambiguous entity. Researchers suggest stakeholder theory is often unable to distinguish among

individuals and groups that are stakeholders from those that are not (Phillips and Reichart 2000). This

complicates the ability of organizations to clearly identify the groups their sustainability strategies and

reports should address. Boutilier (2011) states: "

the natural environment can be affected by a company's

activities and, through channels such as climate change, can have an effect upon the company

" (Boutilier

2011). Thus, ‘environmental’ stakeholders may consist of facets directly and indirectly affected by

organizations’ sustainability strategies, yet unidentified as stakeholders.

Stakeholder theory suggests that the needs of shareholders cannot be met without satisfying the needs of

other stakeholders (Foster and Jonker, 2005; Hawkins, 2006; Jamali, 2008), thus offering a renewed

understanding of organizations’ relationships with multiple constituencies (Jonker and Foster, 2002). GRI

reporting is undertaken as a strategic plan by corporations to demonstrate the organization's sustainability

performance to stakeholders. It is part of the dialogue and relationship building with stakeholders. Hence,

stakeholder theory is a useful framework to evaluate GRI reporting to understand the relationship between

the organization and its various stakeholders regarding sustainability. In the past, GRI reporting provided

primarily subjective information strongly linked to the political structure of the organization. However, in

the last two decades, the disclosure of objective environmental and social information has increased in

amount and complexity indicating increased emphasis on stakeholder engagement.

The GRI is a public international independent standard organization that originated in 1997. The GRI’s

sustainability reporting guidelines are based on three factors - economic, environmental, and social impact.

The reporting guidelines focus on a wide range of topics including energy use, diversity in the workplace,

anti-corruption, and human rights. The GRI reporting guidelines enables any organization to increase

transparency with their stakeholders. The reporting standards help organizations improve relationships

with their stakeholders, enhance the organization’s reputation, and build customer trust. Currently, 80

percent of the world’s 250 largest companies report in accordance with GRI Standards (“FBRH” 2020).

Cisco, for example, is an organization dedicated to bettering the environment using sustainable business

strategies and has published GRI reports since 2005. Furthermore, Cisco has a dedicated sustainability

team that gathers the necessary data to write the GRI report following GRI standards.

In the GRI (G4- Sustainability Reporting Guidelines), there are three categories of indicators based on

economic, environmental, and social impact. In the GRI guidelines and protocols, each of these indicators

is divided into sub-categories or components that cover different facets of the categories within the

indicator. The GRI also lists 58 disclosures to provide the reporting organizations with an overview

understanding of stakeholder engagement during the reporting processes (Krumay and Brandtweiner

2014) and (GRI Global Reporting Initiative) see Table 1. Hence, every published report is a result of

stakeholders’ engagement and collaboration with the sustainability team.

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Standards

Disclosures

Description

G4-24

“Provide a list of stakeholder groups engaged by the organization” (GRI Global Reporting

Initiative, p. 43)

G4-25

“Report the basis for identification and selection of stakeholders with whom to engage”

(GRI Global Reporting Initiative, p. 43)

G4-26

“Report the organization’s approach to stakeholder engagement, including frequency of

engagement by type and by stakeholder group, and an indication of whether any of the

engagement was undertaken specifically as part of the report preparation process.” (GRI

Global Reporting Initiative, p. 44)

G4-27

“Report key topics and concerns that have been raised through stakeholder engagement,

and how the organization has responded to those key topics and concerns, including

through its reporting. Report the stakeholder groups that raised each of the key topics and

concerns.” (GRI Global Reporting Initiative, p. 44)

Table 1: Stakeholder Engagement GRI Standards Disclosures

(adapted from the G4-GRI

Sustainability Reporting Guidelines)

Organizational structures and mechanisms can help resolve sustainability challenges; however,

stakeholders' shared understanding is a prerequisite for solving these challenges (Elliot 2011). Thus,

stakeholder engagement, communication, shared knowledge, and data are the foundation for building a

business sustainability strategy (Eweje 2011). This also applies to building the GRI reports as it represents

the organization's sustainability vision and mission in society. Furthermore, an organization that adopts a

business model or strategy that resolves environmental issues might be appealing to similarly minded

individuals that would want to work for that organization (Hoeffler et al. 2010). Hence, stakeholders'

engagement, responses, and reporting to their organizations' substantiality team is of great importance

because GRI reports may attract or repel future stakeholders.

Methodology

We adapted

text mining techniques

which are based on word and/or phrase analysis of text (Salton and

Buckley 1988) and (Gaikwad et al. 2014) in our analysis of GRI reports. Text mining is defined as “the

process of analyzing text to extract information that is useful for particular purposes” (Witten 2004). We

enhanced this technique using the

text statistical analysis

of term frequency “words” captured within the

GRI reports. To achieve a more accurate analysis, the Term Based Method (TBM) was used, which captures

a word having semantic meaning (Gaikwad et al. 2014). The text mining techniques are appropriate to

analyze the data because our assumption is that terms relating to groups or entities in the GRI reports

represent organizational stakeholders. In this manner, we identify primary stakeholders and the nature of

organizational engagement regarding sustainability issues. Similarly, text mining analysis reveals

what

organizations believe the sustainability expectations of stakeholders are at a given point in time.

We examined 16 years of Cisco annual sustainability reports between 2005 and 2020. The text was obtained

from the GRI reports in a PDF format, the reports were downloaded from Cisco’s official websites, and we

validated them in the GRI website. We also followed the text mining techniques and processed the 16

documents as a "corpus" (body) of texts, then applied the preprocessing techniques by ridding the

document of unnecessary characters (Debortoli et al. 2016).

We used Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency (TF-IDF). This technique enabled us to understand

how important a term in a document is as a part of a corpus (Figure 2). First, all report texts were

transformed into a single string of text, called a corpus. Then we removed all non-standard UTF-8

characters ((e.g., “!”, “@”, “#”), along with stop words (e.g., “a”, “by”, “the”) from the corpus. We also

stemmed the terms, meaning they were reduced to their word stem. To minimize this bias, we made use of

the mean term frequency-inverse document frequency (tf-idf) to omit terms that have a low frequency and

terms occurring in most documents. We only included terms which have a tf-idf value more significant than

the median frequency (such as

Cisco

entrepreneurship, sustainability,

and

engagement

) (Köhl et al. 2019).

Examining GRI Sustainability Reports

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Results

The text mining techniques we used are centered on words and/or phrase statistical analysis and how

important the word and/or phrase frequency is in the documents. We used R studio software to apply the

text mining techniques to find a significant term’s frequency and to match terms (i.e.,

customer(s

)), and

words or phrases (i.e.,

environment(al)

) in the documents according to the semantics of the text. Table 2

lists the four unique stakeholder groups identified in the GRI indicators. Each of the four stakeholder

groups has at least ten associated indicators implying they are recognized as predominant organizational

stakeholders in the sustainability reporting guide. Thus, we use these stakeholder groups to evaluate their

relationships with sustainability topics within GRI reports.

Stakeholder

Group

Indicator

code

Number

indicators

Description

Customer

EN17,

PR1

PR9

The organization focuses on customer satisfaction by control of

product responsibility and performance, and improvements or

increased accessibility of the product.

Employee

EC3,

EC7, LA1

to LA16

Directly enhance the well-being of employees related to

turnover, wages, benefits, health and safety at work. Also, salary

increases or intangible benefits such as training and facilities.

Environment

EC2, EN1

to EN34

Assess

implications,

risks

and

opportunities

for

the

organization’s activities due to climate change that impacts

natural systems including ecosystems, land, air, and water.

Society

EC8, SO1

to SO11

This group’s goals are to bring benefits to society and improve

the impact organizations have on local communities including

technology advancements and research. Also, decreasing risks

to society related to operations and products.

Table 2: Indicators for each Stakeholder Group

(GRI Sustainability Reporting Guideline) and

(Mascena et al. 2018))

After identifying primary stakeholders associated with GRI reporting guidelines, we analyzed the annual

sustainability reports (or Corporate Social Responsibility Reports, CSR) of Cisco Systems across the years

2005 to 2020. We chose Cisco for several reasons. Cisco Systems is a worldwide leader in the networking

industry that was founded in 1984. In 2005, Cisco published their first Corporate Social Responsibility

(CSR) report that covered 29 indicators. In the 2005 report introduction section, Cisco revealed their vision

for engagement in sustainability processes with two stakeholder groups, customers and employees. Cisco’s

mission is to transform how people connect, communicate, and collaborate. In 2017, Cisco recorded

revenue of $48 billion with a 72,900-employee count. In 2018, Cisco ranked in 1st place over U.S.

organizations and 7th place globally according to the Global Corporate knights green ranking. Thus, Cisco

has a long history of sustainability reporting, stakeholder engagement, and recognition for sustainability.

The text for Cisco’s sustainability reports was obtained from Cisco's GRI report in a PDF format from their

official website. These reports were validated with the GRI website. We scrubbed the reports manually to

obtain an only text. We followed recommended text mining techniques and processed the documents as a

"corpus" (body) of texts (Debortoli et al. 2016). The preprocessing of the reports included the removal of

the punctuation, numbers, white space, and the English language stop words. We also evaluated public

revenue data to explore the relationship between stakeholders' engagement and corporate income received

in exchange for goods or services.

Table 3 presents the word use frequency results for the stakeholder groups termed (

employee(s),

customer(s), environment(al),

and

society

) used in each annual sustainability report. We also collected

frequency data for the words

sustainability

and

entrepreneurship

for additional insight

Word use

frequency is an important indicator of stakeholders’ engagement with organizational sustainability teams

during the reporting process. During the first couple of years 2005-2006, the terms’ use frequency was

relatively stable showing only a moderate increase in the word

society

in 2006. A synopsis of the

information in these first reports details how Cisco contributes to society in three different ways. First, it

supports nonprofit organizations with grants and products donations. Cisco also conducted educational

and economic development programs and encouraged their employees to volunteer in local social

Examining GRI Sustainability Reports

Twenty-eighth Americas Conference on Information Systems, Minneapolis, 2022

programs. Hence, the use frequency of the term

society

indicates it was the main stakeholder in

organizational sustainability strategy during this time.

Year \ Term

Customer

Customers

Customer(s)

Employee

Employees

Employee(s)

Environment

Environmental

Environment(al)

Engagement

Sustainability

Society

Entrepreneurship

Revenue

Report_2005

157

231

24801

Report_2006

176

242

28484

Report_2007

190

250

140

34922

Report_2008

103

313

416

116

214

39540

Report_2009

127

134

406

540

135

225

360

36117

Report_2010

185

259

152

40040

Report_2011

137

139

237

376

235

239

474

149

153

43218

Report_2012

128

172

248

420

247

235

482

258

196

46061

Report_2013

117

162

165

338

503

272

204

476

101

244

249

48607

Report_2014

136

102

237

339

195

224

419

176

170

47142

Report_2015

145

178

276

195

197

392

175

201

49161

Report_2016

138

142

272

414

223

173

396

117

110

219

49247

Report_2017

111

112

240

352

302

185

487

133

303

48005

Report_2018

114

130

241

371

137

174

116

202

49330

Report_2019

101

128

269

397

377

441

161

312

51904

Report_2020

125

148

301

405

205

308

406

104

188

298

49301

Table 3: Word Frequency in Cisco GRI Reports

In 2007, an increase in emphasis on the environment and society is shown, as well as an increase in

emphasis on sustainability and engagement compared to the prior years. In fact, the GRI report used the

term

society

only 8 times in 2005 and then 41 times in 2007, representing a 412% increase. This reflects

the importance of society as the primary focus of stakeholder engagement in 2007 compared to

environmental stakeholders with a 41% increase. In 2007, Cisco’s GRI report included 26 sustainability

indicators, using EC8 for the first time. The EC8 indictor signified that Cisco was now investing in and

developing an infrastructure service to serve the public through commercial, in-kind, or pro bono

engagement.

The 2008 GRI report shows an increase in the number of sustainability indicators from 26 in 2007 to 33 in

2008. Importantly, the EN4 indicator was added to the report in 2008. The EN4 covers the indirect energy

consumption that is made by a primary energy source. In this regard, Cisco reported their partnership with

Pacific Gas and Electric, which was a local utility company, to reduce energy consumption in their San Jose,

California campus during peak periods. The primary goal was to direct the saved energy to be deployed

elsewhere, to build an automation system to control the task of turning off the unnecessary lighting, to

reduced-power modes, and to raise threshold temperatures for cooling in buildings. This environmental

engagement approach to save energy was clear in the company reporting results. The term

environment

(al)

was used 214 times in 2008, compared to the previous year in which it was used only 140 times,

representing a 53% increase. Analysis of the 2008 GRI report reflects a clear emphasis on engagement with

environment(al)

(53% increase) and

employee(s)

stakeholders (66% increase).

In 2009, Cisco increased the number of pages in the GRI report to 273 pages from 164 pages in 2008 as

more sustainability indicators were added. In total, Cisco’s efforts now covered 48 sustainability indicators.

As expected, the incremental increase in pages in the GRI positively affected the frequency of the terms.

The term

environment(al)

emerged 360 times as a function of the inclusion of additional (EN) indicators,

representing a 68% increase from 2008. For example, (EN23) the total number and volume of significant

spills was reported for the first time in Cisco’s GRI report. In this indicator, Cisco revealed they have a

comprehensive emergency response system in place to prevent unintended spills or discharges from any

Cisco facility or operational site. The report also leveraged the company’s regional initiatives such as

Environment Day in India, specifically the Act Green in Bangalore, where Cisco promoted ‘Think Green’.

The company started promoting their employees and their participation in environmental sustainability

through events such as Bike to Work Day and Earth Hour (

Cisco Corporate Social Responsibility Report,

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2009). Furthermore, Cisco created a formal partnership with vendors who provide services with low impact

on the environment. For example, Cisco’s print jobs contract was awarded to Xerox, a company who uses

recycled paper stocks. Also, Cisco’s landscape services provider “Valley Crest and Scape Maintenance”

follows a standard process of recycling the waste oil used in landscape trucks and equipment, as they

recycled over 200 quarts of oil each year. The growth in use frequency of

environment(al)

is representative

of the engagement of this stakeholder in Cicso’s 2009 sustainability strategy.

In the 2010 report, while stakeholder engagement appears to decline from 2009, the sustainability

emphasis shows an alignment of the organization with two sustainability stakeholders, Cisco employees,

and society. This is clear through the frequent use of the terms “

collaborative

”, and “

entrepreneurship”

seeking to align activities and stakeholder engagement with broader business strategies and corporate

values. For example, Cisco’s management and the employees interacted informally through team meetings

and internal communications. This resulted in 85% of Cisco employees completing the annual pulse

employee survey in 2010, compared to the 80% in 2009. As a result, Cisco resources were more effectively

aligned with stakeholder goals as demonstrated by the frequency of term use.

In 2011, an increasing interest in sustainability research and reporting affected the reporting process in

general (Sedera et al. 2017). The year 2011 shows a substantive increase in all stakeholders’ engagement as

indicated in the word frequency of the GRI. For example, the average use of the term

society

in the reports

from 2005 to 2010 is 33.5, but in 2011 the term

society

is used 153 times in the report. Overall, in 2011,

most GRI reporting organizations changed reporting processes and Cisco adhered to these changes as well.

The area chart in Figure 1 is a visual depiction of changes in stakeholder term frequency across the years

with corporate revenue included as the line on the chart. After the drop in all term usage in 2010, the

frequency of all stakeholder terms shows a substantial increase in 2011. Furthermore, the focus of the report

changed to emphasize environmental stakeholders with term “

environment(al)

” increasing from 152 times

in 2010 to 474 in 2011. Interestingly, the trend in corporate revenue appears to mimic the trend in

stakeholder word use. This suggests an important relationship exists between stockholder engagement in

sustainability and revenue. Sustainability researchers might find it valuable to explore this relationship

further.

Figure 1: Cisco Annual Revenue, and Terms Frequency over the years of reporting.

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In 2012, Cisco integrated a new enterprise sustainability information system (SIS) into its network to

monitor and process their sustainability reporting metrics. The SIS system expanded and automated data

collection about sustainability. The SIS also had a noticeable improvement on data accuracy, and an

essential focus on more critical tasks such as evaluating and implementing mitigation projects. In 2013,

Cisco’s GRI report accentuated the water consumption indicators of sustainability (EN8, EN9, and EN10).

Additionally, they integrated a new SIS system that improved the company’s ability to track water

consumption data for most of their facilities’ operations. After examining the stakeholders’ terms frequency

in 2011, 2012, and 2013 reports, we found that the terms “employee(s),” “customer(s),” and

“environment(al),” were used more, but the term “society” saw the most significant increase (63%). In 2013,

corporate engagement and sustainability strategy focused on multiple stakeholders. Indeed, in 2013 Cisco

was ranked in the 20

position in the Corporate Knights Global 100 Most Sustainable Corporations list.

Since then, Cisco has maintained an enviable ranking as one of Corporate Knights’ top 100 ranked

companies (see Table 4) with several top-10 rankings.

Year

Global Corporate Knights Ranking

Overall Score

2013

58.6

2014

66.2

2015

56.4

2016

61.6

2017

71.5

2018

77.00

2019

76.12

2020

83.59

Table 4: Cisco Overall Score in Corporate Knights Ranking

(Corporate Knights website).

For the years 2014 to 2017 we applied a different analysis technique to understand the trends in stakeholder

engagement. We used TF-IDF and the findings are shown in figure 2. First, the term "Cisco" was the most

frequently used term, followed by

employee(s)

and

environment(al)

in the four years spanning 2014 to

2017. Additionally, the term

environment(al)

represented 2% of the overall terms across the 4 years. This

illustrates Cisco’s ambition to link the environment and employees with their brand as a competitive

advantage in their sector. The terms

employee(s), customer(s),

and

society

totaled 7% of the total terms’

frequency which suggests a strategy of continued engagement with these stakeholders on sustainability

issues. Of note, the term

society

had a frequency of 303 in the 2017 GRI report, more than any previous

year.

Figure 3: Word Distributions Network

Figure 2: (TF-IDF)

(Joachims 1996)

1=customer(s), 2=entrepreneurship, 3=sustainability,

4=engagement, 5=society, 6=environment(al),

7=employee(s), 8=Cisco

TF-IDF

200 400 600 800

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

TF-IDF- Based Rank

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As shown in Table 3, the term

entrepreneurship

was used fewer than ten times every year up to the year

2016 GRI report. In 2017, it appears the term

society

was leveraged with the term

entrepreneurship

in the

GRI as Cisco was executing a new approach to engage society. We found that the Cisco 2019 GRI report

approach was taken to a different level. The company shared their stakeholder engagement model

throughout the reporting process. We analyzed the term

engagement

combined with stakeholder groups

and the term was found to emerge with

employees

more than any other group under the internal

engagement emphasis within the company.

We constructed a network of word distributions over the years in Figure 3 to visualize the relationships

between stakeholder terms and their connections as they accrue over 16 years. The node size represents the

total frequency of the term in the reports. The lines thickness shows the correlation between the terms

according to their overlapping word appearance. The network is created using the R packages LDAvis, and

tm. We found that the terms

customer(s), employee(s),

and

society

are tied and overlap. The term

employee(s)

is related to all stakeholder group terms with a thick line interpreted to indicate the constant

effort by Cisco to include and engage employees with other stakeholders. This is supported in the finding

that Cisco continues to engage customers through society in solving environmental challenges (“CSR

Report” 2020), and environmental challenges are influenced by the employee(s) through

sustainability

Conclusion

Our results are subject to limitations. Our analysis is a disclosure of sustainability reporting based on the

terms' frequency, stakeholder groups, and the determinants of their exposure for only one company’s

(Cisco) listed indicators that composed their GRI report. Also, we did not analyze or evaluate the ‘use

quality’ (positive term quality or negative term quality) of the terms of frequency.

Our study uses stakeholder theory as a framework to understand stakeholders' engagement in

organizational sustainability strategy and documentation during the reporting process. We used text

analysis methods to analyze the representation of stakeholder groups in sustainability reports for Cisco

across the years 2005 to 2020. We found that stakeholder engagement varies according to the sustainability

strategy of the organization in any given year. That is, the frequency of word use in the annual sustainability

report reveals how organizations prioritized and engaged different stakeholders in their sustainability

strategies for that period of time. While it is not surprising that different stakeholders are engaged to a

greater/lesser extent in sustainability strategies, our analysis shows definite trends. We believe these trends

suggest sustainability strategies are adopted to meet the expectations of stakeholders whose interests,

needs, and expectations vary across time. Furthermore, the accrual across time of word use frequencies for

stakeholder terms indicates that employee stakeholders are highly prioritized in sustainability strategy

followed by engagement with environment(al) stakeholders.

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Cisco Sustainability Report

Prompt to Clone This Cisco Sustainability Report

Apply this example's core structure, strategic pacing, and structural hierarchy directly to your own topic.

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