You are being asked to research a specific company's policies and initiatives, suppliers and partners and their human rights and environmental track record."The goal of the assignment will be to give students a deeper perspective on the complexity of business interaction with human rights issues by researching one company’s experience." You are encouraged to build your case study based on data and information obtained primarily from scholarly and reputable research resources. This guide will help you identify these sources.
Before you begin your company research, it is important to understand that there is a difference between private and public companies and the amount of information that is publicly available. Public companies are required by law to make available data about their annual revenue, products and services, distribution channels and financial statements. They make this information available through a variety of sources including their SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) documents. However, this level of transparency is not required for private companies and that makes researching private companies that much more difficult.
There are some key places where you can gather company information. Visit each tab for a list of relevant resources.
Search Tips:
A company's corporate or investor relations websites can be excellent sources of company policies, statements and initiatives. Companies will often highlight specific ongoing projects that support their stance on things like human rights, their environmental impact, sustainable and equitable suppliers or supporting women in the workplace.
Additionally, an investor relations website will have their most recent press releases (or 8ks). Press releases feature announcements about company projects, hiring, initiatives and products and services.
You can find a company's corporate or investor relations website easily via a Google Search. For example: Search the company's name and corporate website OR investor relations.
See this example of Chevron's Human Right's Policy from their corporate website.
Corporate Social Responsibility is often a term used to descibe how a company measures their social, environmental, and economic impact on the communities within which they operate. Many organizations such as NGOs, industry analysts, nonprofits and others provide rankings, benchmarks and good and bad citizens lists that show how one company stands up to others in the same industry.
Below are a few rankings and lists specific to human rights and the evironment benchmarks:
Who are the suppliers within an individual company's supply chain? This is often difficult to find.
Problems you may encounter:
Typical places to look for a company's supply chain information:
Publicly traded companies are required by law to make some of their inner business operations and financials publicly available in the form of SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) filings. Filings such as the 10K highlight detailed financial information about products, markets, distribution channels, research and development, patent, and environmental safety information. For more information on what each filing document covers visit: Corporate Filings and Forms.
You can access a company's SEC Filings in these databases:
To find supplier information, you can also use trade and scholarly articles. These types of articles can contain information about new contracts, lost contracts, joint ventures, etc. When searching within journals and databases, you can restrict your search to a specific company by typing its name into the search box. You can also add supply chain related keywords such as:
The sampling of journals and databases below are your best options for searching for supply chain information.
Supply Chain Journals @ Pitt
Business Article Databases
Industry and Company Analyst Reports can also be good sources of information about a company's supply chain. For example, industry reports often highlight the major companies, and upstream and downstream supplier industries and customers. You can find industry and company analyst reports in the resources below:
Companies are often operating in multiple geographies or have suppliers and partners in other countries. Researching the cultural, political and social environment of the country where your company operates will give you insight into the business climate and the possible impact (good or bad) this business may have in the country.
Below is a sampling of databases for that contain country data and reports information:
