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This paper aims to examine the influence of corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting quality and board characteristics on corporate social reputation of Chinese listed firms.

Firms chosen for this study are drawn from a social responsibility ranking list of Chinese listed firms. The social responsibility rating scores identified by this ranking list are used to measure the social reputation of firms studied. The model-testing method is used to examine hypothesised relationships between CSR reporting quality, board characteristics and corporate social reputation.

The results indicate that CSR reporting quality positively influences corporate social reputation but chief executive officer/chairman duality as a measure of board characteristics has a negative impact on corporate social reputation. Firm’s financial performance and firm size also positively influence corporate social reputation.

The relatively small sample of firms for a cross-sectional study, and the proxies constructed for various concepts to empirically test hypotheses can limit generalising findings to firms outside the social responsibility ranking list. Future studies can undertake longitudinal analysis and compare socially responsible firms with others to expand empirical findings about corporate social reputation.

This paper investigates the influences of CSR reporting quality and board characteristics on corporate social reputation in the context of a developing country, China.

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) reporting has been widely accepted as a vital tool for communicating with stakeholders on a range of social, environmental, and governance issues, but how companies define, interpret, apply, integrate, and communicate their CSR efforts and impacts in corporate reporting is anything but a straightforward task. The purpose of this chapter is to explore the concept of materiality in CSR reporting and demonstrate practical examples of good CSR and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) reporting practices. We chose the aviation industry because of its economic relevance, constant growth, and future expected changes in the aftermath of COVID-19. In addition, airlines affect many of the SDGs directly and indirectly with contending results. This chapter is timely because of the growing willingness by companies to integrate CSR and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) thinking into the corporate strategy and business operations using materiality assessment and enhancing their competitive advantage and ability to maintain long-term value and because ESG and ethical investing have become part of the mainstream investing. Thus, this chapter contributes to an understanding of the wide range of existing and new reporting frameworks and regulations and reinforces the importance of discussing how this diversity of approaches can affect the work toward worldwide comparability of CSR and sustainability reporting.

The aim of this paper is to determine corporate social reporting practices and to examine the type and extent of such reporting in the corporate reports of manufacturing companies in Swaziland over a period of two years from 2007 to 2008. This paper also aims to examine the various areas of social practices in which companies are involved.

The study uses questionnaires and corporate reports to gather information from 30 selected manufacturing companies. This research uses content analysis of corporate reports as a method to measure the extent and nature of corporate social reporting according to the number of words disclosed over the two‐year period.

Findings show that the concept of corporate social responsibility is fairly new in Swaziland and very few companies disclose corporate social responsibility information in corporate reports. However, the study finds that there is a trend of increasing corporate social responsibility information disclosures among the companies from 2007 to 2008.

The increasing trend of corporate social responsibility information disclosures indicates a positive step towards the further development of corporate social responsibility information reporting practice in Swaziland as well as other developing African countries.

The study makes an important contribution to the knowledge of corporate social responsibility in Swaziland. In addition, it also elaborates the perspective for a greater understanding of the social obligations that corporate entities owe to their stakeholders and society in general.

Here, the paper aims to model major corporate characteristics associated with corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting (in particular, its quality). Corporations in China are increasingly expected by the public and government to be more socially responsible. As such, it will be intriguing to ask, what are the characteristics associated with higher quality CSR reporting?

CSR report quality scores are hand-gathered from HEXUN (web site) whilst financial and stock market information from the China Stock Market and Accounting Research (CSMAR) database. A total of 613 CSR reports' quality scores were utilized (Rankins CSR ratings) in the process of developing the model. Reports are hand-gathered from corporations listed on both the Shenzhen and Shanghai stock exchanges (SSE).

The results suggest most interestingly, the quality of CSR report (mandatory) to be strongly, positively related with corporate financial characteristics: market capitalization (corporate size), shareholders' concentration of powers, corporate financial leverage (implying bondholders/debtors' influence). Surprisingly, CSR reporting is associated neither with corporate profitability nor by state-ownership. The presence of independent directors (at least in China) seems to have negative influences.

CSR reporting may easily be mandated by government through a regulatory process. However, this does not necessarily lead to reports of a high quality. Instead, orientation towards higher visibility in social responsibility for listed corporations is better explained by financial characteristics: market valuation, ownership and leverage.

This paper utilizes for the first time, in-depth and multi-faceted quality CSR scores (overall, segregated into macro-social, content and technology) for investigating CSR behavior of listed corporations in China. The findings suggest financial characteristics size (market valuation), ownership (shareholders' concentration of powers) and corporate leverage are better predictors of CSR behavior among listed corporations.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse CSR reporting in large Finnish listed companies, focusing on the following questions: what kinds of motives and objectives appear behind CSR reporting, what kinds of documents are used in CSR reporting, and what kind of information related especially to CSR policy, stakeholders, as well as economic, social and environmental responsibilities, is presented? Finally, the idea is to compare large Finnish listed companies' CSR information with corresponding international results.

The study is based on the analysis of qualitative data consisting of formal CSR reports, including annual reports and special CSR reports, of 2006. The empirical analyses are supplemented with interviews with four company representatives and with two auditors. The information of special CSR reports is analysed by using the content method.

Companies understand responsibility as a duty to act responsibly towards their stakeholders and CSR reporting as a response to stakeholders' expectations and demands. The study indicates that especially corporate characteristics such as industry group and internationalization stage as well as general contextual factors such as social and cultural context affect voluntary CSR reporting. It shows that the large Finnish listed companies define corporate social responsibility as being based on Elkington's triple bottom line (TBL) model. In CSR reporting companies follow more or less GRI guidelines. Formal CSR information is presented based on the TBL model but companies emphasize different issues in their reporting.

First, the research is based on interpretative understanding and these kinds of analyses are always more or less subjective. Second, the analysis is based on CSR information produced by large Finnish listed companies. Thus, the study does not give an extensive description of the CSR reporting in all Finnish listed companies or in non‐listed companies. Third, the research is a cross‐sectional study based on CSR information published in one particular year. And fourth, the research data include only certain formal CSR information, not all CSR disclosures. Thereby, the analysis gives a snapshot or a glimpse of Finnish CSR reporting practices. The analysis does not tell anything about history, development or future of CSR reporting practices or anything about other kinds of CSR communication of the large Finnish listed companies. Thus, the reality reconstructed in the study must not be generalized, but used to understand CSR reporting in the context.

The paper analyses CSR reporting in large Finnish listed companies, focusing on motives and objectives, documents used, and information related particularly to CSR policy, stakeholders, and economic, social and environmental responsibilities.

Diverse understanding of corporate social responsibility (CSR) abounds among scholars and practitioners in Nigeria. The purpose of this chapter is to reinvent CSR in Nigeria through a deeper understanding of the meaning and theories of this nebulous concept for better application in the industry. The qualitative research approach is adopted, relying on critical review of scholarly articles on CSR, website information of selected companies and institutional documents. It was found that there are diverse meanings of CSR in the reviewed literature, but the philanthropic initiatives and corporate donations for social issues are the common CSR practices in Nigeria. Besides, the eight dominant theories of CSR that find relevance for applications in the industry are shareholder/agency, stakeholder, legitimacy, instrumental, social contract, conflict, green and communication theories. The implication of the discourse is that better understanding and application of CSR theories would strengthen conceptual, theoretical and empirical research in the field of CSR. Besides, CSR theories are useful sources of information for practitioners for designing social responsibility policies and practices as well as for providing scholars with sound theoretical framework for academic research.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the ongoing debate on governance, accountability, transparency and corporate social responsibility (CSR) in the mining sector of a developing country context. It examines the reporting practices of the two largest transnational gold-mining companies in Tanzania in order to draw attention to the role played by local government regulations and advocacy and campaigning by nationally organised non-governmental organisations (NGOs) with respect to promoting corporate social reporting practices.

The paper takes a political economy perspective to consider the serious implications of the neo-liberal ideologies of the global capitalist economy, as manifested in Tanzania’s regulatory framework and in NGO activism, for the corporate disclosure, accountability and responsibility of transnational companies (TNCs). A qualitative field case study methodology is adopted to locate the largely unfamiliar issues of CSR in the Tanzanian mining sector within a more familiar literature on social accounting. Data for the case study were obtained from interviews and from analysis of documents such as annual reports, social responsibility reports, newspapers, NGO reports and other publicly available documents.

Analysis of interviews, press clips and NGO reports draws attention to social and environmental problems in the Tanzanian mining sector, which are arguably linked to the manifestation of the broader crisis of neo-liberal agendas. While these issues have serious impacts on local populations in the mining areas, they often remain invisible in mining companies’ social disclosures. Increasing evidence of social and environmental ills raises serious questions about the effectiveness of the regulatory frameworks, as well as the roles played by NGOs and other pressure groups in Tanzania.

By empowering local NGOs through educational, capacity building, technological and other support, NGOs’ advocacy, campaigning and networking with other civil society groups can play a pivotal role in encouraging corporations, especially TNCs, to adopt more socially and environmentally responsible business practices and to adhere to international and local standards, which in turn may help to improve the lives of many poor people living in developing countries in general, and Tanzania in particular.

This paper contributes insights from gold-mining activities in Tanzania to the existing literature on CSR in the mining sector. It also contributes to political economy theory by locating CSR reporting within the socio-political and regulatory context in which mining operations take place in Tanzania. It is argued that, for CSR reporting to be effective, robust regulations and enforcement and stronger political pressure must be put in place.

Nowadays, social and environmental reporting is approached in different ways, paths and fields by either large-, small-, or medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). However, as demonstrated by previous scholars, SMEs have been critically discussed because they provide lack of proper sustainability disclosure. The fact that the predominant approach of SMEs toward social responsibility is often “sunken” and not “explicit” can drive the lack of disclosure. Furthermore, unstructured communication practices create difficulties in measuring and reporting the sustainability reporting phenomenon in SMEs. The aim of our study is to shed light on the activity of SMEs’ sustainability reporting and disclosure, specifically, by addressing the variables that influence the choice of the guidelines used to prepare sustainability reports.

The research has been carried out by using qualitative and quantitative methodologies. The empirical evidence is based on all the Italian companies, mostly SMEs, that were certified in 2011 as having adopted both environmental (i.e., ISO14001 or EMAS) and social (i.e., SA8000) management systems. A multivariate linear regression model has been developed to address the influence of several variables (i.e., financial performance, size, time after achievement of the certifications, group/conglomerate control, etc.) on the guidelines’ choice for preparing sustainability reports.

Our findings demonstrate that SMEs prefer to use simple guidelines such as those guidelines that are mandatory under management system certifications. However, the sustainability disclosure driven by the adoption of international guidelines may be more complex if the SME is controlled within a group of companies or if a significant amount of time has passed since the certification date. As such, we developed a taxonomy of their different behavioral drivers according to a legitimacy theory approach.

At this stage, our study didn’t focus on the contents’ quality of the disclosure and reporting practices adopted by SMEs, which is obviously a worthwhile and important area for further research. Furthermore, the analysis took into account the impact of a number of easily accessible variables; therefore, it can be extended to investigate the effect on disclosure of other relevant variables (i.e., nature of the board of directors, age, and industrial sector in which the company operates) as well as contexts prevailing in other countries.

The study represents an important contribution for understanding how and why managers might use externally focused disclosure on social and environmental issues to benefit the company’s legitimacy.

Our study provides interesting insights for policy makers who require social or environmental certification when calling for tenders or specific EU contracts, in order to put aside the “brand” or “symbol” and really focus on the disclosed practices.

Previous studies have provided only a few evidence about reporting practices and related influencing features of SMEs’ sustainability actions. As such, the study wishes to make a significant contribution to the existing literature on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) by providing relevant insights about the factors which influence the guidelines used by SMEs in preparing their sustainability reports.

Purpose: The purpose of this chapter is to establish the sustainability reporting practices of FTSE 100 companies using integrated reporting (IR), corporate social responsibility (CSR) and corporate governance (CG) as proxies. Our study has adopted a holistic approach by combining dimensions of each factor in one variable.

Design/Methodological Approach: The study data cover all FTSE 100 companies over five years, thereby generating 505 company-year observations for each variable of the study. Authors have collected the data from Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) reports filed with Thomson Reuters and International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC).

Findings: Results indicate the practice of sustainability reporting in FTSE 100 companies both per variables and dimensions levels. It shows, for example, 89% of the companies reported on their charitable donations. The study also found that 79% of the FTSE 100 companies reported on their sustainability committees whilst 86% and 85% reported on their emission reduction and waste reduction policies, respectively. Results show that the CSR impact is higher than CG regarding IR adoption. The Logistic Model manages to explain a high percentage of IR adoption while controlling for other misspecification issues such as multicollinearity.

Practical Implication: The study highlights practice of substantiality reporting for public shareholding companies listed on FTSE 100 Index along with interaction among proxies. These will be of interest to companies not only in the FTSE 100 Index but also those outside. Companies can rely on these factors to strengthen their governance, social responsibility and reporting policies in consideration of all stakeholders and not just a few. We believe that we shed a quantitative explanation on IR adoption by CSR and CG factors, and we expect an impact on practices following results of our study.

Social Implication: Results have indicated that at least 60% of companies in the FTSE 100 Index have imbedded social responsibility activities, such as charitable giving, waste reduction initiatives, emissions reduction policy and sustainability committees.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR)¹ has become such an important and popular concept along with the rise of the importance of sustainable development (SD) in the world. Nowadays, CSR is focused on goals such as poverty reduction and SD. It has become clear to the business world that SD is no longer only the concern of governments and related non-governmental organisations (NGOs), and that they should also immediately start becoming concerned about the sustainability of resources and human development along with their financial sustainability. In this sense, establishment of multi-stakeholder dialogues and partnerships among all these actors has also become extremely important.