Browsing by Subject "radar chart"

Corporations’ desire to act in a responsible way as well as the amount of sustainability guidelines has increased during the past decades. Responsible Care (RC) program is an international sustainable development guideline practiced in chemical industry. The program focuses on sustainable use of natural resources, safety and sustainability of production and products, well-being of work community and reduction of waste and emissions. This study seeks to examine the correspondence of contents between national Responsible Care (RC) program in Finland and sustainability framework guidelines known worldwide. The aim of the study is to examine how corporations in chemical industry who follow the national RC program can meet the goals of sustainability framework guidelines, what are the main differences between the national RC program and other sustainability guidelines, and how the national RC program should be improved. The research methods include the content analysis and in-depth interview for corporations. In this research, the sustainability framework is built and the involved guidelines are specified. The national RC program is reflected on the sustainability framework guidelines through content analysis. A model for comparative content analysis is developed to compare the contents of sustainability guidelines by the means of qualitative data visualization through radar charts. The corporate in-depth interviews are applied with a view to obtain complete and comprehensive responses. This study demonstrates that the national RC program highly corresponds to sustainability framework guidelines in terms of environmental responsibility and safety, while the RC program less highlights the dimensions of social and economic responsibility. Based on the main differences, the possible targets for improvement in the national RC program are suggested to enhance consideration of economic and social aspects in the program. From the in-depth interviews, corporations recognize the national RC program to be a useful tool to implement and develop corporation’s sustainability work, yet there is a need to better correspondence with sustainability framework guidelines and to be more user-friendly in practice.