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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between the ISO 26000 (global corporate social responsibility standard) adoption and financial performance. The current study aims to explore whether ISO 26000 social responsibility standard adoption has an impact on financial performance.

The study is based on a sample consisting of French companies listed on the CAC-All-Tradable index for the period 2010-2017. This study is motivated by using panel data estimated feasible generalized least squares method.

The results show that that good corporate governance can improve the financial performance. This positive impact is also noticed in the case of labor relations and conditions, environment and community involvement. However, it does not apply to human rights, fair operating practices and consumer issues, as there is no significant relationship between these dimensions and the financial performance.

The findings may be of interest to the academic researchers, investors and regulators. For academic researchers, it is interested in discovering how the adoption of ISO 26000 can improve financial performance. For investors, the results show that it is appropriate for different countries to adopt the ISO 26000 guidelines and introduce societal practices in their activities.

This paper extends the existing literature by examining the effect of the ISO 26000 standard for financial performance in the French context. The study of corporate social responsibility through its seven societal dimensions has enabled us to understand the guidelines relating to the ISO 26000 standard.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of earnings management on financial performance. In addition, the authors investigate whether corporate social responsibility has a moderating effect on the impact of earnings management on financial performance.

The empirical study is based on a sample of French companies listed on the CAC-All-Tradable index over the period 2008–2018. Feasible generalized least square regression method is used to estimate the econometric models.

Based on panel data of 3,003 French firm-year observations, the authors demonstrate that earnings management has a negative and significant impact on financial performance. Indeed, corporate social responsibility moderates positively the negative impact of earnings management on financial performance in the French context.

The findings have several implications for regulatory, investors and academic researchers. For regulators, it is appropriate to promote more several standards related to corporate social responsibility and earnings management. For investors, considering societal issues is very important in making decisions. For academic researchers, the results show that it is important to discover how corporate social responsibility can influence the relation between earnings management and financial performance.

The existing literature has generally focused on the impact of earnings management on financial performance and the empirical tests did not yield similar results. The study shows that corporate social responsibility has a moderating role in determining the impact of earnings management on financial performance.

Given the country‐specific characteristics of corporate social responsibility (CSR), there is an increasing interest in studying CSR in developing countries. Such studies play an important role in broadening people's knowledge of CSR under different economic, social and cultural conditions. The purpose of this paper is to examine the CSR reports (CSRRs) of listed companies in the largest emerging market, namely China.

Based on a content analysis of 81 CSRRs (2007) of listed companies in domestic security markets of China (the Shanghai Security Exchanges and Shenzhen Security Exchange), the CSR features of Chinese companies are thoroughly evaluated.

The main findings of the study are as follows. Only 5.05 percent of listed companies published their CSRRs in China, and 4.42 percent of them issued a separate CSRR. Most companies (97.18 percent) use “CSRR” as the name of their stand‐alone CSRRs; 79 percent of companies hold a positive attitude to taking on social responsibilities, while no company holds a negative attitude. Various social issues and stakeholders of companies are addressed in CSRRs. In general, state‐owned enterprises (SOEs) have higher propensity to address most of social issues, which may reflect that SOEs are more politically sensitive than non‐SOEs because most of the social issues are just “political slogans” proposed by the Chinese Government in recent years. However, non‐SOEs have better performance than SOEs in addressing the interests of stakeholders. Meanwhile, industrial firms show higher propensity to address the interests of stakeholders than service firms.

The results of this study indicate that CSR reporting practice is still at an early stage of development in China. Meanwhile, Chinese companies tend to follow the Chinese guidelines in issuing CSRRs rather than adopt international guidelines. In addition, Chinese companies are somewhat politically sensitive in addressing social issues. A major weakness of this study is that the sample only represents the best companies in assuming social responsibilities in China, thus some results cannot be generalized to all Chinese companies.

The paper helps people, especially Westerners, to comprehend CSR in China. To the author's knowledge, this paper is the first of its kind to examine CSR in China.

This paper aims to examine the reporting on sustainability and the level of compliance with international best practice, the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), aimed at improving communicative value to users.

Using a qualitative approach, comprising interviews with senior managers and analysis of disclosures in annual reports of Thai-listed companies, this paper contributes to the literature by providing evidence from an emerging market setting.

This study finds that sustainability reporting and integrated reporting perspectives of sampling companies are aiming to satisfy information needs to stakeholders and value creation to external users. Sustainability disclosures are related to some aspect of integrated reporting (IR) principles but not all.

The findings of this study are based on the results from interviews and annual reports of five business sectors, and may therefore, not reflect the sustainability reporting practices and/or annual reports of other Thai-listed companies. Also, there is limited reporting on future outlook.

The findings suggest that while sustainability and IR is being adopted very widely, in many countries, there is much variation in reporting practice especially in our emerging country context adopting a “comply or explain” approach.

For the Thai-listed companies, IR systems could be in their early stages and still have long way to go. The results can greatly encourage Thai-listed firms to incorporate integrated information in annual reports based on international standards thus building trust in capital markets and wider society.

The findings contribute to the literature on sustainability reporting and on the level of compliance with international best practice such as GRI by providing empirical analysis of non-financial disclosures within publicly available reporting in Thailand.

The purpose of this paper is to identify and synthesize the current academic literature on emerging trends to increase CSR reporting credibility.

This paper synthesizes literature on emerging trends to increase CSR reporting credibility from the past ten years, focusing mainly on the most recent five years, by searching ABI/Inform and Business Source Premier for academic papers containing the following keywords: Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Reporting, CSR, Sustainability, and Social Responsibility.

This paper identifies four relatively unexplored trends to improve CSR credibility: CSR assurance, integrated reporting, CSR reporting standards, and CSR regulation.

This study will be of use to academic researchers to facilitate research and discussion on the credibility of CSR disclosure.

Regulatory agencies, boards of directors, customers, suppliers, and investors are increasingly using CSR information for decision making; therefore the credibility of the information is important.

Much of the extant research investigating CSR has focused on financial performance metrics. The study synthesizes the recent CSR literature, including some interdisciplinary research focusing on emerging accountability trends in reporting. The authors identify several research opportunities that will enhance the authors’ understanding of CSR reporting.

This paper aims to investigate the patterns of corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices and disclosures of firms listed on the Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET).

A total of 43 CSR indices under the Securities and Exchange Commission’s nine CSR components were used to quantify the CSR disclosures. The nine CSR components are good governance, environment, consumer protections, fair business practices, human rights, labor standards, community and society, innovation and anti-corruption. The common patterns of the CSR disclosures were subsequently identified using factor analysis.

The factor analysis identified four domains of the CSR disclosures of the SET-listed firms: employee relations, environment, anti-corruption and philanthropic efforts. Importantly, an increasing number of Thai firms are now attaching greater significance to the employee relations aspect of CSR, as opposed to in the past. In addition, an increasing number of the Thai companies have either initiated or participated in the anti-corruption campaigns.

The research offers an insight into the current development in CSR practices and disclosures in Thailand, as compared to a decade ago. To that end, this research conducted a survey on the CSR disclosures in relation to the nine CSR components, and factor analysis was used to establish the patterns of CSR practices. The findings are of great use to regulators in formulating legal frameworks and strategies to engage companies in CSR and also provide further evidence on the CSR practices in an emerging economy. Furthermore, the findings offer businesses and industries a disclosure benchmark, against which firms decide on the nature and extent of CSR information to disclose in the annual statements.

This study aims to focus on the industrial products and resources industries due to the environmental impacts caused by both industries. To convince both industries to increase investment in corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities, the authors have presented the results on the relationships between investment in CSR programs and the financial-based and market-based performances.

The study focuses on the data during 2010-2011 of the listed Thai firms in industrial products and resources industries due to the environmental impacts caused by both industries. The findings show that firms receiving a higher CSR index score also have a higher return on assets (ROA), indicating efficient use of the assets. In addition, investment in CSR programs produces a positive outcome within two years, on average, after the investment. As the study period is two years (2010-2011), no relationships are found between the CSR index and return on equity (ROE) and between the index and Tobin’Q.

The findings show that firms with a higher CSR index have higher ROA, thereby indicating a more efficient use of the assets. In addition, the positive outcome of investment in CSR programs can be realized within a relatively short-time period, i.e. two years on average after investment. As the study data cover only two years (2010-2011), no relations are detected between the CSR index and ROE and Tobin’Q.

Not many research papers have been studied by using emerging market evidence. The interest in CSR in Thailand is just in its early stage. The study examines the association between multicollinearity by using variance inflation factors (VIF), and it shows no defect on the matter. In addition, the data have been checked for the defects in the outliner, which is very variable. It could be affected to the regression coefficient analysis. The table of casewise diagnostics shows that the outliner containing standard residual diversifies regression equation, and it could also misconceive the variable of Y; therefore, the researcher would exclude the mentioned area before analyzing the data. Durbin–Watson statistic is used to do the error check of ROA, ROE and Tobin’s Q, which were found to be 1.938, 1.817 and 1.931, respectively. The mean varies between 1.5 and 2.5, which means covariance. Additionally, association of independent variable could be checked to ensure that the independent variable has no relationship. It could be noticed from Tolerance and VIF, if Tolerance is close to zero or VIF is over 10.0, it means that one of independent variables has associated with other variables. It implies that there is no multicollinearity problem in this study.

This is the first study in Thailand that looks into the effects of CSR activities of industrial products and resources sectors of the industry due to the pollution-prone nature of both industries.

This paper aims to gauge the level of corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure of Islamic banks of Pakistan.

The annual reports of Islamic banks of Pakistan from the year 2003 to 2017 were considered as the source of data. The content analysis method was used to gauge the level of CSR disclosure with the help of the CSR disclosure index. Islamic banks proclaim religiously motivated and ethical institutions; hence, full disclosure was expected from Islamic banks in the domain of CSR.

The average level of CSR disclosure of Islamic banks after a one-and-a-half decade of Islamic banking in Pakistan is 31.23%, which is far below the expected level of CSR disclosure and even below the mean level. The mean comparison analyzes show that the level of CSR disclosure differs among the Islamic banks, old and large Islamic banks are disclosing more information, in addition, the local Islamic banks have a relatively high level of CSR disclosure as compare to the foreign Islamic banks.

The current CSR disclosure policy of the government regarding corporations in Pakistan is insufficient. There is a need to revise this policy which may result in higher CSR disclosure. The results indicate, that there is a difference in CSR disclosure among local and foreign Islamic banks, so this policy must address this aspect as well.

Islamic banking proclaims a new wave of the corporate that has higher social objectives, but a contradiction exists among the ideology and reality of social responsibility of Islamic banks. Then, this study also supports that the same dilemma of low CSR disclosure also prevails in the Islamic banks of Pakistan.

This paper aims to consider the development of corporate social responsibility (CSR) projects by Catoca, a diamond mining company in Angola, along with the effectiveness of these projects, and the benefits to stakeholders.

The research method used was direct observation and semi-structured interview with executives and administrative employees of the company, and collaborators of CSR projects, during 2010, 2011 and 2012. We also analyse documents about CSR projects developed by Catoca and identify the challenges faced.

The management of CSR projects is hampered by the low disclosure of results and the absence of social indicators. This may generate inadequate results compared to investment. The assumption of low stakeholder expectation and the absence of social indicators may lead to neo-philanthropic or preconceived actions that ignore local peculiarities.

This study is limited to one company, and the lack of social indicators means it is difficult to evaluate the reported results.

This paper improves understanding of the challenges involved in CSR projects in Africa and may also be useful for companies that develop CSR projects, drawing attention to issues that could compromise the proper use of resources and hamper results.

This study considers Angola, which is using its natural resources to boost economic and social development, establish partnerships with foreign companies and encourage the development of CSR programmes which often end up filling gaps left by the absence of government action.

This study contributes to the largely under-researched area of CSR projects in Angola.

This paper aims to investigate and compare the sustainability reporting practices of companies in developing nations (BRIC) with those in the developed economies (the UK and USA) as per GRI framework.

Content analysis has been applied on a sample of 232 companies listed on the Stock Exchanges of developing and developed countries (Brazil – BOVESPA index, 39 companies; Russia – RTS index, 21 companies; India – SENSEX, 17 companies; China – SSE 50, 19 companies; the USA – NASDAQ 100 and Amex major market index, 58 companies and the UK – FTSE100, 78 companies). It uses descriptive statistics and independent sample t-test to identify significant comparisons.

The findings of this paper suggest that developing nations are providing more information on sustainability practices as compared to the companies in the developed nations. Overall mean disclosure score of developing countries is 59.04 per cent followed by that of the developed countries at 36.47 per cent. The result of independent sample t-test shows these differences significant at 1 per cent level.

The results of the current paper implicate that the corporate managers of the developing nations should prefer rational and purposive reporting. They should work on the quality of reporting rather than just filling pages because social and environmental issues are more gross in the developing nations as compared to the developed countries.

Developing and developed nations jointly use the scarce resources and provide output to the world, thereby raising sustenance issues. However, not even a single study was found while reviewing the literature that studied and compared the sustainability reporting practices of these countries.