Search results

The research aims to profoundly investigate the correlation between uncertainty-fear against COVID-19, corporate social responsibility (CSR) and labor practices issues based on ISO 26000.

Partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was adopted for data analysis and hypotheses testing on a sample of 304 managers and employees in the Egyptian small and medium enterprises (SMEs).

Preliminary results indicate that the uncertainty-fear against COVID-19 positively affects CSR practices in SMEs. CSR positively impacts labor practices dimensions. However, CSR has an insignificant effect on the social protection and work condition dimension. Also, CSR has a significant mediating role in the association between uncertainty-fear toward the pandemic and labor practices. But, this relation is insignificant regarding social protection and work condition dimension.

Managers could develop a consistent strategy for applying CSR practices, providing clear information and focusing on their procedures to protect their workforce during COVID-19. Governments should impose policies to guarantee that all employees have the same opportunities and not discriminate directly or indirectly in any labor practice.

Based on both the “stakeholder” and “social-cognitive” theories, this study shed light on the optimistic side of the COVID-19 pandemic, as it also brings the concepts of social responsibility, sustainability and green practices back into the light, which helps in solving labor issues.

This study aims to demonstrate the importance of the requisite trust for the processes of digitalization of business, the state and society in general.

The work is built “from particular to general”. The analysis of many cases of digitalization projects leads to some higher-level principles useful for description most of them – trust, umwelt and complexity.

Based on the analysis of empirical material, the principle of requisite trust is introduced based on the definition of trust through a “relevant umwelt”. In addition, the article examines many aspects of society digitalization processes using cybernetic concepts. It is shown that (1) in the core of digitalization process is the export of the umwelt from human head to a computer (digital umwelt), (2) models used in the digital platforms are not only a reflection of social processes, but have a significant impact on them, like the observers of cybernetics of the second order and (3) umwelt concept is closely related to a social reality concept, meanings are relative and are carried by the communication systems.

The paper summarized practical and theoretical experience in the field of digital projects and introduced The Law of Requisite Trust. In the future, this principle should be studied more formally in quantitative terms.

The principle of requisite trust, as well as the definition of trust through the relevant umwelt is original. The promotion of trust in organizations and also digital organizations using such instruments as standard of social responsibility (ISO 26000) has high practical value.

This paper aims to identify the corporate social responsibility (CSR) patterns of Indian manufacturing firms using a CSR index based on ISO26000 and India’s National Voluntary CSR Guidelines.

A total of 121 manufacturing enterprises in the national capital region (NCR) were surveyed. The questions related to the involvement of CSR in business strategy, involvement in CSR planning, involvement in environmental activities, involvement in social activities, monitoring, evaluation and involvement in CSR, reporting and policy and deployment of CSR. A two-step cluster analysis using log-likelihood measures was used to identify groupings in the data set based on their performance across the seven issues.

The two distinctive segments identified adopted intermediate CSR activities, and one undertook advanced CSR activities.

This study has several limitations. First, the survey data were drawn exclusively from medium-sized enterprises in the NCR. Second, all the indicators in the CSR index were equally weighted.

This paper contributes to the literature by grouping manufacturers’ CSR activities based on seven dimensions suggested in ISO26000 and India’s National Voluntary Guidelines. The results of this study can help managers, boards and regulators better understand CSR and identify ways to improve it further.

Companies are often accused of using sustainability disclosures as public relations tools to manage financial and non-financial stakeholders' impressions. The purpose of our study was firstly to determine how comprehensive the human rights disclosures of a sample of large international companies were and secondly, whether different narrative styles are associated with levels of disclosure to manage readers' impressions about the company. We analysed the public human rights disclosures for 154 large, international companies obtained from the UN Guiding Principles Reporting website. On average, companies complied with only one-third of the UN Guiding Principles Reporting Framework criteria. Communication about policies has the highest compliance, whilst communication about determining which human rights aspects are salient to the company, remedies for transgressions and stakeholder engagement have the lowest disclosure. When we split the sample between high disclosure and low disclosure companies, we found that the readability of the human rights disclosures is exceptionally low and even more so for low disclosure companies. Low disclosure companies used words implying Satisfaction significantly more than high disclosure companies, which provides some support for suspecting that low disclosure companies practise impression management by only presenting a ‘rosy picture’, as well as obfuscation via low readability. We add to the literature on impression management by large corporations in their sustainability reporting, and specifically human rights disclosures, by revealing how the interplay of low disclosure, low readability and overuse of words signalling Satisfaction contributes to impression management, rather than sincere attempts at accountability to all stakeholders.

Nearly half of the surveyed SMEs in Poland admitted that there is a very strong competition on the market where they operate. Among the neuralgic factors they point to the lack of qualified employees (PARP, 2021). Companies can use CSR policies to attract competent employees and retain valuable ones. Therefore, the purpose of this research paper is to find out whether, according to employees working in SME companies, an active CSR policy influences their employment-related decisions.

The data were collected through questionnaires received from 618 employees of 29 SMEs in Poland through questionnaires, which were analyzed with the IBM SPSS Statistics 26.0 and Microsoft Excel 2019.

The survey results provide evidence that CSR activities are an important factor in employees' decisions about potential employment and/or continued employment. In particular, the results show that almost all areas of CSR, except cooperation with the local communities, are important to employees. The survey also provides a clear answer as to which CSR initiatives benefiting employees of SME companies are the most important for them.

The conducted research fills a gap in CSR related studies on the SME sector in Poland. This is important, given the significant share of SME sector companies in the market in Poland and around the world.

We study ceremonial adoption of voluntary standards, where participants adopt the standard in principle but do not change their practices. Ceremonial adoption can benefit individual participants, who may be able to reap the benefits of association with the standard at lower cost, but it can be problematic for overall levels of adoption. We conceive of ceremonial adoption as an interaction between strategic incentives of participants and social ties to their audiences, such that not all participants are likely to ceremonially adopt. Our setting is the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification for sustainable construction. We study the conditions under which projects register for LEED certification, allowing them to claim affiliation with LEED, but then do not actually finish certification. While our data are correlational in nature, our results suggest that studying the competition for audience members (in our case, occupants) can provide greater understanding of certification behavior as well as overall levels of adoption. Our findings have implications for organizations that design and maintain voluntary standards and for organization theorists who wish to understand field-level change. Thus, we provide more evidence that strategy and organizational theory interact in important and often unexamined ways.

This study aims to investigate the direct nexus between board characteristics, corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure and the cost of equity capital (CEQ). This is done by using agency theory, stakeholder theory and signalling theory, followed by an investigation into the indirect mediation impact of CSR disclosure in the board characteristics-CEQ nexus. It intends to present new experimental evidence from Jordan’s developing economy.

The study’s target population was services companies registered on the Amman Stock Exchange (ASE) between 2012 and 2020. As a result, the population and sampling of this study are represented by all services companies for whom complete data are available over the period, with a total of 43 services companies yielding 387 company-year observations. Data for our study were obtained from their annual disclosures and the ASE’s database.

The main findings demonstrated that board size, board gender variety and the number of board sessions positively affect CSR disclosure significantly. In addition, three board characteristics (i.e. board size, board independence and board gender variety) significantly negatively affect CEQ. Besides, CSR disclosure significantly negatively affects CEQ and it fully mediates the relationship between two board characteristics (i.e. board size and board gender variety) and CEQ, whereas it partially mediates the nexus between board independence, CEO/Chairman duality and the number of board sessions of board characteristics and CEQ.

This study varies from earlier studies, in that it builds a new research model by looking at the mediating role of CSR disclosure in the nexus among board characteristics and the CEQ.

The Agenda 2030 have drawn a lot of interest in academic studies. This necessitates accounting research on nonfinancial reporting and sustainable development goals (SDG) disclosure in an under-investigated context. The purpose of this study is to examine the contribution of nonfinancial reporting practices to SDG disclosure by 120 companies from 12 African nations for the years 2016 to 2020.

The study uses a content analysis to gauge how much information are disclosed on SDG by the selected firms. The authors carried out content analysis using the global reporting initiative frameworks to determine the level of SDG disclosure across the companies by examining the selected nonfinancial reports.

Sustainability reports account for 50% of such SDG disclosure making it the highest. This is followed by corporate social responsibility report which accounts for 23%, while environmental reports account for 20% and Chairman’s statement accounts for 7%. The result is expected since corporate sustainability report has been the major channel for disclosing activities relating to social and governance issues in recent times.

The results of this study demand that corporate entities in Africa take responsibility for their actions and exert significant effort to achieve the SDG. While the government has the main responsibility, corporate entities must support the SDG to be realized.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is one of the few studies that examines nonfinancial reporting practices with a focus on SDG disclosure. In addition, this study offers novel insight into how accounting research contributes to nonfinancial reporting practices and SDG disclosure.