adidas-group:
Giving 110% our efforts to be a responsible business in 2007
Published March 5, 2008
Download the Report (3MB PDF)

To stay on top of trends in CSR reporting, Covive reviews nearly every CSR report published by companies around the world. Covive Principal Chad Upham took note of his personal reaction to the recently published adidas-group 2007 corporate responsibility report, going beyond initial impressions, to discover a refreshing, strategic reporting approach focused on topics of the day most relevant to the global sportswear and sports equipment manufacturer.

My first reaction to the report was that the majority of content is comprised of irrelevant statistics not related to the CSR work of the Social and Environmental Affairs (SEA) team at adidas. I began making a list of statistics in the print report in two columns, one for quantitative figures directly related to adidas, and another for general "state of the world" data. I found the tally to be quite imbalanced for a report supposedly documenting a company's own efforts, not simply a documentation of global problems. As a Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) Organizational Stakeholder and savvy CSR report reader, the complete lack of reference to the GRI guidelines structure, left me feeling that the report was prepared in a free-for-all style trying to look like a sustainability report, but really just avoiding real performance data by masking it in statistics.

I did not stop with the print report, however, as the frequency of links to the corporate sustainability website lured me to explore further. On the website, I discovered a very thorough record of policies, program descriptions, documentation, and performance data. The organization of this content with supplemental downloads demonstrates a highly operationalized, evolving sustainability program.

Upon downloading the 2005 Connected by Football social and environmental report, following a more conventional CSR format, I began to understand the departure in editorial style in the latest publication. I have said myself in summarizing reporting trends that 3rd and 4th year reporters, having established a reporting process, are focusing on issues of the day in their print report. Clearly China and India, both as manufacturing centers, and as emerging markets are topics of the day for adidas, especially with the Olympics this year. The publication also presents a case for sustainability in a way that educates new readers who may not be aware of global sustainability issues, making the publication a primer, more appropriate for distribution to wide audiences, perhaps available in stores, shipped with purchases, or paired with a financial annual report.

Overall, the report presents an interesting case for the departure from technical reporting guidelines such as GRI, though trends towards comparability and reliability through third-party assurance are made more difficult by such a maverick approach. For the die-hard CSR audience, a web-based GRI index with links to online report content would satisfy a basic minimum requirement with little additional effort.

Note: I submitted a follow-up e-mail to the UK-based report consultant and writer, Adam Garfunkel, who pointed out that a GRI index was indeed included in a seperate online report, different from the corporate sustainability content. The new 2007 online report with GRI index can be found at: http://www.adidas-group.com/en/SER2007/ 

Learn more about the sustainability efforts of adidas-group on their corporate website at http://www.adidas-group.com/sustainability