Resumo: Recently there has been an evolution of the concept of utility associated to the information made available in a compulsory and voluntarily way. It has been argued that there is an ongoing evolution from the paradigm of utility, based on accountancy data and its properties, to the paradigm of social responsibility. This social responsibility, from the perspective of the social contract, takes into consideration a vast range of users and useful data – economic, environmental and social. The Internet provides a fast channel, global and inexpensive, to reveal this information. This paper analyses the communication practices of 504 companies (the largest and the best according to the 2004 and 2005 ranking list of the EXAME magazine, grouping them together according to levels of ‘transparency’ and characterizing them according to organizational and environmental variables. Results show that the capital markets, the activity sectors and nationality are some of the variables responsible for the increase of data in circulation and potential users. These variables also account for different communication strategies.
