Analysis of environmental indicators in international companies by applying the logistic biplot

Abstract In recent years in countries all around the world there has been an increasing concern for environmental issues and how companies, governments and society in general must face this problem which certainly can be harmful for all citizens. In this research we focus on companies and, more in depth, on an environmental aspect that has acquired more and more importance since different countries have ratified or approved the Kyoto Protocol, that is, greenhouse gas emissions. Although companies are not actually required to present this type of environmental information on a compulsory basis, it has been shown by different studies that there are more and more companies that disclose this type of information voluntarily, no doubt as a result of the indicators proposed by the Global Reporting Initiative, which for years has worked to suggest a number of indicators that businesses should reflect in their sustainability reports in order to be considered more responsible by the society. The objective of this research is to analyse to what extent different international companies disclose indicators on greenhouse gas emissions using the logistic biplot technique, discriminating by countries, activity sectors and geographical areas. The results obtained will give us an approximation of how the different indicators on greenhouse gas emissions and climate change in general can be identified by countries, geographical areas and activity sectors. The logistic biplot technique allows us to obtain synthetic indices combining all single indicators. The synthetic indices permit the positioning of each of the companies in a spatial representation for an original exploration of the problem globally. It is possible to study similarities among companies, groups of companies with similar characteristics and the variables responsible for the clusters. The synthetic indicators or dimensions obtained can also be considered as ordered gradients of the organizations studied reflecting the position of each company on the synthetic index.