How do companies report information about their suppliers in their non-financial reports

Abstract

This paper describes how companies report information related to the relationship with their suppliers through their non-financial reports. This qualitative research uses the tools of the grounded theory method to code pieces of text from public documents disclosed by companies such as annual reports, sustainability reports and any other document, excluding financial reports, related to their suppliers. The coding process resulted in two types of codes. The first type describes actions and requirements related to environment, ethics, human rights and management systems that companies disclose about their suppliers. The second type of codes describes how this information is presented. After comparing these two types of codes with the help of NVivo software, we were able to identify different reporting strategies and disclosure preferences that companies have. This will be described in the Discussion section of the paper.