Sustainability and governance of sugarcane ethanol companies in Brazil: Topic modeling analysis of CSR reporting

The current debate on corporate social responsibility was triggered by the understanding that companies should be responsible for mitigating the impacts of their activities on the society and the environment. In this paper, drawing on the structural power of business, we examine the rule-setting power in which sugarcane ethanol companies engage, and then discuss why these companies develop and use institutions to promote sustainability. We use a machine learning algorithm, latent Dirichlet allocation, to identify companies' commitment to sustainability and business-led governance by analyzing a large volume of data from public corporate documents. The results reveal 36 main themes that demonstrate the rule-setting power of the sugarcane ethanol industry through voluntary standards, codes of conduct, and corporate social responsibility these companies use as indicators of superior social and environmental performance and to show sustainability is embedded in companies' priorities. However, the results also show critical issues of unsustainable production practices can affect industry image and stress socio-environmental relationships. These issues can be ameliorated with integrative governance that considers the independence of the sectors involved in ethanol production.