Social responsibility and transparency in the Web: an analysis applied to Spanish agro-food cooperatives

Abstract

The values and principles of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) have been applied by Cooperative societies since their origins. Given the link of CSR with cooperative culture principles and information spreading, the aim of this paper is to analyze the relationship between social responsibility, corporate governance and transparency in the Spanish agrofood cooperatives. This paper analyzes the CSR information these companies spreads across the web, according the Global Reporting Initiative contents. The paper tries to show whether there are significant differences between the levels reached by primary and secondary or tertiary cooperatives. Finally, the relationship between levels of information dissemination and cooperatives size or age is analyzed.