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The purpose of this paper is to provide empirical proof concerning the social focus of responsibility information disclosure – dominant in annual reports of basic and chemical industries groups – and how the company's group type affects the amount and focus of social disclosure in a company's annual report.

This paper explains and describes data characteristics employed in the research. Annual reports are analyzed by content analysis method.

The results show that the main foci of social disclosure from companies registered at the Indonesia Stock Exchange are labor theme (51.60 percent), followed by customer theme (19.40 percent), society theme (14.70 percent) and environmental theme (14.30 percent), respectively. Hypothesis test proved that there is no significant difference in the presentation of social disclosure amount in all themes between companies in the basic and chemical industries group or in the variety industries group.

The composing of a social disclosure list tends to be subjective and it is possible to omit certain items that are supposed to be disclosed by the company.

The paper shows that it is necessary to pay increased attention to the social environment, considering that companies and society are equally important.

This paper describes the importance of amount, manner, and the reason behind a company's social responsibility disclosure.

This article analyzes the interplay between regulation and social and environmental reporting in northern Italian social enterprises. Specifically, it investigates how “non-accredited” social enterprises discharge voluntary accountability before and after the introduction of regulation making social and environmental reporting compulsory for “accredited-social enterprises.” By developing a content analysis on 170 stand-alone social and environmental reports, this article provides a longitudinal analysis of voluntary disclosures in a regulated context from 2006 (before regulation) to 2009 (after regulation). Based on the total number of disclosures and the average number of sentences per report, Italian “non-regulated” social enterprises showed increased voluntary disclosure on social and environmental matters from 2006 to 2009; however, when analyzing the average sentences per report, it emerges that the information contained in the stand-alone social and environmental reports decreased, especially disclosures related to “social-related issues.” This article looks beyond crude noncompliance analysis with legislation and analyzes if the regulation influences organizations’ voluntary disclosure. It analyzes all of the social and environmental disclosures provided by northern Italian “non-accredited” social enterprises before and after the introduction of regulation. The novelty of this article rests in the fact that it does not analyze the social and environmental disclosure of “legal social enterprises”; rather, it considers the whole voluntary disclosure context for “non-accredited” social enterprises in a regulated environment.

This research examines the bidirectional relationship between Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) voluntary disclosure engagement and financial performance of a panel of banks extracted from the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) banking industry, covering a period of 11 years (2007–2017). We find that GCC banks, and in particular Islamic banks, voluntarily disclose low level of information related to ESG activities. Using system GMM methodology, we provide evidence that ESG disclosure adversely affects bank performance, regardless of the bank performance measure used. Thus spending on ESG turns out to be costly for GCC banks, a result that is consistent with the agency problem, where managers are likely to reduce long-term expenditures related to ESG actions in order to boost short-term profits. As managers' compensations often relate to short-term financial performance, managers tend to reduce their spending on ESG activities. Furthermore, contrary to previous research, our results indicate that the relationship between ESG and financial performance is bidirectional and dynamic. We also find evidence that ESG disclosure positively affects performance only for well-diversified banks. Finally, although conventional banks disclose significantly more information related to ESG activities, we do not find any significant differences between the two types of banks in the relationship between ESG disclosure and performance. Our suggestion is that these results are consistent with what we call “clientele” and “gravitation” effects, where a customer tends to choose to deal with the bank that reflects his religious beliefs (gravitation effect) and with the bank that provides him with the best services (clientele effect) regardless of its ESG disclosure.

This research is one of the first studies to examine the effects of CSR disclosures on a firm’s decision to purchase back their own shares of stocks. Additionally, the authors examine whether the effect of CSR disclosures is stronger than the effect of CSR performance on the decision to repurchase shares. Examining firms in the United States, the authors find that total CSR disclosures and the CSR disclosures related to the dimensions of social, environmental, and governance are significantly and positively related to the number of shares that a firm buys back. Additionally, the authors find that the effects of CSR disclosures are stronger for total and the CSR dimensions of social and governance than for CSR performance. For the environmental dimension of CSR, both disclosure and performance scores are significant. This research expands our understanding of the impact of CSR disclosure by showing the importance it plays in the decision to buy back stock and implies that firms that repurchase their stock are more socially responsive than firms that do not. Finally, it contributes to the growing literature on how CSR disclosure has a different impact than CSR performance on firm decisions and outcomes.

Albeit gradual and uneven, the emergence of social and environmental reporting by publicly held corporations has been a major development in the last few decades. This paper aims to explore patterns of the emergence of these disclosures. Using an institutional theory lens, this paper considers mimetic, normative and coercive possibilities.

US publicly traded company data from 2013 to 2019 is used to test the hypotheses. Mimetic forces are proxied with corporate board interlock frequency. Normative ones use the extent of gender diversity on corporate boards. Measures of business climate and industry regulatory sensitivity proxy coercive potentiality.

Studied in isolation, each of the three forces through which organizations pursue the heightened legitimacy of enhanced environmental and social disclosures has credibility. The strongest support exists for mimetic and normative mechanisms, perhaps because the US government has been reluctant to make these expanded disclosures mandatory.

In the world of voluntary action, more attention to diffusion is needed. For these purposes, better proxies will be needed to study change. Social and environmental information should be separated for individual analysis.

At least in the USA, companies are attentive to what other companies are doing. There is something to be said for the ethical dimension of corporate transparency.

Governmental action in this area has not been effective, at current levels. Corporate leadership is essential. Critical information is shared about disclosure by board members.

Although institutional theory makes several appearances in this area, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, the current study is the first empirical archival study to examine the three forces simultaneously, providing evidence as to the relative magnitude of each institutional force on environmental and social disclosures. Should these disclosures not be mandated by government, this study shows pathways for enhanced disclosures to continue to spread.

The purpose of this paper is to explore whether any discrepancy exists between the corporate social activities disclosed in the annual reports of Islamic banks and the corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure index which has been developed based on the Islamic business ethics framework.

This paper reports on a survey of annual reports of seven Islamic banks using the method of content analysis to measure the volume of CSR disclosure.

The results show the overall mean CSR disclosure index of one Islamic bank out of seven to be above average and the issues of CSR are not of major concern for most Islamic banks.

CSR disclosure in the Islamic banks is experimental and could be explored in greater depth in future studies.

The findings have important implications for academics and researchers, as they pave the ways for further investigation. The results also have important implication for Accounting and Auditing Organisation for Islamic Financial Institutions in developing a CSR reporting standard if Islamic banks are to enhance their image and reputation globally, as well as to remain competitive.

The paper contributes to the growing debate on CSR in ethical perspective and key underlying issues associated with the emergence of new disclosure practices for Islamic financial institutions. Through this paper, new visibilities explored, and competing dilemmas opened up.

The aim of the paper is to investigate whether social disclosure and environmental disclosure have a substituting or a complementing effect in reducing information asymmetry between managers and stock market participants

This study attempts to provide a comprehensive analysis of a firm's social and environmental disclosure strategy. The authors posit that this strategy simultaneously affects information asymmetry and disclosure.

Findings suggest that social disclosure and environmental disclosure substitute each other in reducing stock market asymmetry.

The measurement of social and environmental disclosure is based upon a coding instrument that makes some explicit assumptions about the value and relevance of information. Moreover, information asymmetry cannot be directly measured and is inferred from the behaviour of proxy variables such as share price volatility and bid‐ask spread.

Results suggest that social disclosure reinforces the informativeness of environmental disclosure for stock markets, even substituting for it under certain conditions. Stakeholders must assess and retain an increasing flow of information: a more efficient disclosure strategy becomes critical if firms want to convey the right picture of their CSR performance.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first study to explore the joint effect of social disclosure and environmental disclosure in reducing information asymmetry.

The purpose of this paper is to determine the extent of voluntary corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure by Indonesian firms on their social media and to compare it with the mandatory disclosure on their annual reports.

The authors use publicly listed Indonesian firms that are included in the SRI-KEHATI Index as the sample. Further, by using NVIVO software, the authors qualitatively analyze CSR activities disclosed on firms’ social media and annual reports with an interpretive approach.

The findings indicate that Indonesian firms still exhibit early stages of social media-based voluntary CSR disclosure. Further, issues on training, education and skill building dominate firms’ disclosure. Finally, Indonesian firms disclose less CSR information in their social media than in their annual reports, thus confirming the early stages of social media-based CSR disclosure.

The small sample size limits the generalizability of the results.

This paper provides insights on which CSR issues are commonly disclosed in firms’ social media. This study may also inform regulators the extent of disclosures that could be regulated in social media.

Social media-based CSR disclosure in developing countries is relatively understudied. Thus, this paper empirically shows the topic and intensity of CSR disclosure in social media and the comparison between this type of CSR disclosure with CSR disclosure using other media.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate multinational corporations' (MNCs) voluntary practice of including corporate social and environmental disclosure (CSED) on their web sites and characteristics that inspire MNCs to be more accountable in this regard.

This study adopts discrimination analysis to test six hypotheses to determine which variables influence the MNCs to post their CSED on the web sites. Data from a sample of 49 MNCs were analyzed with STATISTICA. The independent variables tested include log of total assets (size) and log of total equity (size), return on assets (profitability), debt ratio (risk), auditor (Big4 and non‐Big4), country effect (origin the USA or non‐USA) and industry effect (manufacturing versus services).

The results show that companies with a strong equity base and in a good financial condition have a propensity to voluntarily disclose more environmental information. For social disclosure, company size and the profitability discriminate the most. MNCs disclose a number of items pertaining to the two areas. These results are in line with evidence found in some prior studies.

This study has its limitations. First, the results would be more conclusive if more companies had been included in the sample. Second, only six variables are tested and there may be scope for explaining the extent of the internet disclosure using other variables. Third, this research does not look into the quality of CSRD.

This study provides an empirical analysis of practices and characteristics of MNCs relating to CSRD on their web sites. The findings from this study help understand MNCs' corporate behavior in terms of CSED.

This study has, for the first time, included three more variables (financial risk, profitability, and country effect) to investigate the disclosure of social and environmental information by MNCs through their web sites, on which there is limited evidence.

The demand for social information by individual investors is supported by the survey reported in this study. Based on the results of the 1991 survey on the usefulness of annual reports to corporate shareholders, there appears to be a strong demand for information about product safety and quality, and about the company′s environmental activities. Furthermore, a majority of the shareholders surveyed also want the company to report on corporate ethics, employee relations and community involvement. Since there appears to be a strong demand for social information by shareholders, serious consideration should be given to requiring certain social disclosures in annual reports. Furthermore, a large minority of those surveyed would like these disclosures to be audited. It may be in the interest of the auditing profession actively to support those areas of social disclosure that it feels comfortable auditing and to develop the skills to provide such audits. If not, the profession may find itself in the position of being required to attest to something for which it has no expertise.