The interest in corporate sustainability has increased rapidly in recent years and has encouraged organizations to adopt appropriate digital communication strategies, in which the corporate website plays a key role. Despite this growing attention in both the academic and business communities, models for the analysis and evaluation of online sustainability communication have not been developed to date. This paper aims to develop an operational model to identify and assess the requirements of sustainability communication in corporate websites. It has been developed from a literature review on corporate sustainability and digital communication and the analysis of the websites of the organizations included in the “Global CSR RepTrak 2015” by the Reputation Institute. The model identifies the core dimensions of online sustainability communication (orientation, structure, ergonomics, content—OSEC), sub-dimensions, such as stakeholder engagement and governance tools, communication principles, and measurable items (e.g., presence of the materiality matrix, interactive graphs). A pilot study on the websites of the energy and utilities companies included in the Dow Jones Sustainability World Index 2015 confirms the applicability of the OSEC framework. Thus, the model can provide managers and digital communication consultants with an operational tool that is useful for developing an industry ranking and assessing the best practices. The model can also help practitioners to identify corrective actions in the critical areas of digital sustainability communication and avoid greenwashing.

One of the prerequisites for a favourable business environment is a stable legislative context and law enforcement. In particular, for SMEs, that do not have the financial resources for stable legal assistance, legal risk is becoming one of the most important business risks. The aim of this paper is to enrich the current scientific knowledge with a comparison of the impact of legal risk on SMEs in selected countries. The empirical research was conducted by Tomas Bata University in Zlín during 2019-2020. In total, 1935 SMEs completed the questionnaire and their responses were examined to fulfil the purpose of the paper. The four statistical hypotheses were analysed through statistical methods such as Z-score and Chi-square tests, with IBM SPSS Statistics 23.0 used for data evaluation. Findings highlight that more than 50% of SMEs consider the management of legal risk as appropriate. Only 39% of SMEs consider the business environment as over-regulated. Almost 50% of entrepreneurs agree that their business is affected by frequent legislative changes but with no negative impact. There are statistically significant differences in consideration of legal risk between SMEs from the Czech Republic and the rest of the selected countries (Slovakia, Poland, Hungary and Ukraine).