Business sustainability in Brazil and Germany: case study of the automotive industry.

A significant number of German companies are installed in Brazil, many of them in the automotive or automotive supplier sectors. Information about the economic, environmental and social performance of major companies in these sectors is easily obtainable from sustainability reports, available as printed reports distributed by the head offices or as files for downloading in corporate websites. This paper gives a brief review about corporate sustainability and the results of a study carried out on sustainability reports of three companies with head offices (or, in one case, a relatively independent subsidiary) in Germany and subsidiaries in Brazil. The results show that, although the sustainability reports of the analyzed companies contain relevant information, they do not allow any sustainability benchmarking that could distinguish better and worse environmental and social performances. They also do not help an environmental and social performance comparison between plants in the European Union (e.g. Germany) and Mercosur (e.g. Brazil). Nevertheless, they give some evidence of efforts aligned with the principles of the Global Compact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]