From Old-Fashioned to Trend-Setters : How H&M's CSR Work has Developed over Time

Abstract: Background: Corporate Social Responsibility has been studied since the 1970s, but was originally controversial and met opposition from e.g. Milton Friedman who viewed a company’s responsibility as being strictly economic. Since then, CSR has grown in scope and importance, especially within the fast fashion industry, and is now a central part of academia and business operations. However, the debate whether companies’ responsibilities are only economic or also include responsibilities such as social, environmental, and transparency- related is still ongoing, and it is therefore interesting to study how companies view their own responsibilities. Purpose: Our research aims to fill the existing research gap regarding how companies view their responsibilities by providing an overview of how the CSR work has changed over time in fast fashion companies. Research Question: How has the focus of the CSR work changed over time in large, international, fast-fashion companies? Methods: A qualitative content analysis inspired by grounded theory was used to answer the research question. The data material consisted of H&M’s sustainability reports from 2002, 2005, 2008, 2011, 2014, 2017 and 2019. The material was categorized into social, environmental or transparency dimensions, along with several under-categories. A simpler analysis of news articles regarding sustainability during the period 2002-2019 was also performed. Results: The results suggest that the fast fashion industry has increased their sense of responsibility as the expectations of stakeholders in the area has grown, and that CSR work increasingly is seen as a possible competitive advantage. The results also show that the most difficult parts to fulfill is the ethical level of the CSR pyramid, due to the difficulty of comprehending and fulfilling the stakeholders’ different expectations and demands, and the social dimension, because of its profound complexity, especially within fast-fashion.