GRI performance indicators and corporate variables. Evidence from Italian listed companies’ corporate social responsibility reports

The paper aims to verify how some variables related to profitability, size and industry can classify the disclosure of global reporting initiative (GRI) indicators. The study focuses on the Italian listed companies, which produced corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports in accordance with the GRI guidelines. Content analysis of the GRI-based CSR reports was performed to verify the type and the number of the GRI indicators disclosed. This research comes from the few studies that analyse the adoption of the GRI indicators in companies’ CSR reports. We use regression trees technique to describe the common characteristics of companies in their reporting of indicators. The results highlight the importance of a company’s ROE and the industry in classifying it according to the number and the type of indicators disclosed. The most reported category is that of social indicators related to labour practices, followed by the category of economic and environmental indicators.