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The analysis of Nike Inc., Adidas Group and Asics’ Sustainability Reports was focused on the examination and comparison of intent, structure, content and nature of this specific tool for disclosure, focusing on the influential role of national culture.

In the first chapter, the thesis started with the study of past literature about CSR and sustainability reporting, where it has emerged how SRs increased in numbers, improved in comparability and in performance disclosing thanks to the work of global standards guidelines towards standardization and harmonization. At the same time, academics were conscious of the fragmented results obtained by the actual process of standardization, declined to countries, industries and size dimensions of companies.

Parallel to these researches, some academics pointed out how national culture of countries, where companies are headquartered, can influence CSR corporate approaches towards actions and commitments undertaken and towards sustainability disclosing. In the second chapter, we have discussed about Hofstede’s major findings of Japan, USA and Germany cultural dimensions and we have presented the most interesting empirical studies focused on the study of national cultures and corporate approaches to CSR and to sustainability reporting.

Due to the sample chosen, we dedicated a part of our investigation to the study the apparel/footwear industry in order to better understand the complexities and peculiarities of CSR and sustainability in that specific context. The companies chosen have been presented as three competitors companies, belonging to the same industry, operating in a global commercial area and that are worldwide recognized and present with stores.

The research question that has risen spontaneously from the theoretical chapters was based on the understanding of how national cultural background of countries could influence the sustainability reporting of these three companies, in terms of length, intent and content discussed but also to determine whether any similarities in the communication used by three companies is due to the ongoing process of harmonization extrapolated by theoretical studies. From the analysis elaborated in chapter four and discussed in the previous paragraph of this chapter, it has emerged how sustainability reports appear similar in the corporate aim of presenting right inside the sustainability strategy, through the words of the CEO, by focusing on related material issues important to stakeholders and to the company itself.

However, it presents differences in:

- how the reports are edited (reporting standard used, external assurance for data accuracy, reporting period)

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- the way information is conveyed (in the order of discussion of topics and in the “space” dedicated to topics)

- the type of information discussed (number of indicators, use of comparable indicators to improve comparability, details given to support argumentation…)

- the content of certain sub-categories (for example the focus on employee empowerment for Nike and Adidas, Nike’s attention to the strategic impact of sustainability on efficiency)

Some of the differences emerged have been explained by using the results obtained by past empirical findings about the CSR/national culture relationship.

What emerged from the analysis is that only in some cases, we have been able to find a relation between CSR disclosure and cultural differences; in other cases we found difficulties in evaluating the origins for dissimilarities since past literature did not help in providing answers.

As regards the results for the investigation about intent of SRs, it is not possible to surely state that the differences emerged in the analysis are due to cultural dimensions presented by Hofstede. In part, Hofstede’s arguments found evidence, but only in the case of Asics (while for Adidas Group with the same high level of uncertainty avoidance no correspondence was found).

With respect to length analysis, it is possible to state that the differences observed in the total pages and the number of sections prepared for argumentation could be explained with the cultural dimension of individualism vs collectivism. Further research could better analyze the effective foundation of these results by using a bigger sample of companies (including some other companies originating from collectivistic countries in the South-East Asia to obtain more robust results).

As regards the examination of contents emerged in SRs, we interpreted the results helped by past empirical studies (in particular those of Montiel and Kaplan (2016) and Katz et al. (2011). We focused, in particular, on the comparison of our results with those of Montiel and Kaplan, given the focal role that these authors have had in developing of our empirical analysis (in fact, we took inspiration from their methodological grid to prepare our table for comparison).

In conclusion, we confirm that we found correspondence with the results of Kaplan and Montiel with respect to the relation between the cultural dimension of individualism vs collectivism and CSR themes of individual entrepreneurship and innovation, between power distance cultural dimension and CSR topic of employee autonomy. No other relevant and significant links have been found in the analysis. Results from our analysis are also in

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accordance with what stated by Katz et al. (2011): American culture is more concerned about stakeholders’ opinion with respect to German and Japanese culture.

If we interpret the results emerged from a different perspective (at a higher and more “superficial”41_{level), we can state that companies share the disclosure of some macro topics:} for example, they have in common the fact that they communicate about suppliers relations management and innovation (for economic category), employment, occupational health and safety, human rights, philanthropy and volunteerism (for social category) energy and emissions, materials and waste management, water issues, climate change and product stewardship (for environmental category). However, most of the time the argumentation is developed in different terms in each report, starting from the type of information disclosed and the indicators proposed.