Documents supporting corporate sustainability

Documents guide the implementation of corporate sustainability

Various corporate documents play an important role in expressing the company's intentions on corporate sustainability issues and in guiding both its own operations and the operations of its partners. Themes important to sustainability are considered in many corporate documents, including various commitments, policies, codes of conduct and contracts.

The following perspectives are related to documents and corporate sustainability:

• It is important to understand and specify which stakeholder relationships are guided by which document.
• Each document should have a function that guides responsible operations.
• Documents are also the means of communication.
• Documents should form an understandable and coherent whole. General higher-level documents such as policies are concretised, for example, in documents defining different stakeholder relationships.
• In recent years, the demands for shared responsibility and responsible contracting have emerged in the area of corporate sustainability, which affect the content of the guiding documents. Requirements that are dictated unilaterally and only concern one party are not considered responsible.

Opinio Juris specialises in assessing and drafting, among other things, human rights commitments and policies, various Code of Conduct documents and the sustainability content of various contracts of companies (e.g. ensuring corporate responsibility in procurement contracts). Merja Pentikäinen from Opinio Juris is involved in the so-called Jargonfree research project (2024-2026), which studies responsible contracting, especially in corporate procurement. The project is funded by the Kone Foundation and coordinated from the University of Tampere. The project analyses how documents related to corporate procurement, especially procurement contracts and Supplier Codes of Conduct, guide and ensure the responsibility of procurement.