The Factors Influencing Corporate Social Responsibility Disclosure

In recent years, companies are becoming socially responsible and now stakeholders almost expect a company to have CSR policies. Therefore, in twentieth century, corporate social responsibility (CSR) became an important development in public life (Barnett, ND).Corporate social responsibility is defined as “the ways in which an organisation exceeds the minimum obligations to stakeholders specified through regulation and corporate governance” (Johnson, Schools and Whittington, N.D cited in March, 2012). Stakeholders can be defined as “those individuals or groups who depend on the organisation to fulfil their own goals and on whom, in turn, the organisation depends” (Johnson, Schools and Whittington, N.D cited in March, 2012). There are many

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is something that affects all companies and should be an active factor in the company’s decision making. It is something all corporations need to care about. CSR is when business’ or corporations take part in an initiative or campaign for a cause that will benefit society and/or in some way make the world a better place (Taylor, 2015). Initially, Corporate Social Responsibility started to take shape around the 1950’s, but some say that it dates all the way back to the 1800s, the idea of CSR was seen (Carroll, 2007). One may think that because it is dated so long ago, it doesn’t have an important impact today nevertheless, it is proven that Corporate Social Responsibility is a pathway for entities to self benefit as they are in the process of benefitting society.

1. It is hard for companies to communicate their efforts in CSR to shareholders and investors. Although companies have progressed from only 20% of public companies publishing CSR reports to 72% from 2011 to 2013, there are still no universal standards established for reporting CSR information. Therefore, even the best CSR efforts can lose their value simply because the efforts are not communicated to users of financial statements. This is also in part due to CSR efforts being ill-defined. While some CSR ideas are universal many of the aspects of CSR are industry specific and hard to translate into meaningful disclosures for interested parties.

Corporate Responsibility (CR) has emerged as a significant theme in the global business community and is gradually becoming a mainstream activity, according to a new survey by the Economist Intelligence Unit, in cooperation with Oracle Corporation. The growing emphasis on corporate responsibility is affecting the relationship between companies and their various stakeholders, such as investors, customers, vendors, suppliers, employees, communities and government.

“Economic, social, ethical and environmental responsibilities, some of which require compliance with the law others requiring discretionary action to ensure that the company does not knowingly operate to the detriment of society” – McIntosh et al, 1998, Pg. 284

THE CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY (CSR) MOVEMENT has grown in recent years from a fringe activity by a few earnest companies, like The Body Shop, and Ben & Jerry’s, to a highly visible priority for

Social responsibility is an idea that has been of concern to mankind for many years. Over the last two decades, however, it has become of increasing concern to the business world. This has resulted in growing interaction between governments, businesses and society as a whole. In the past, businesses primarily concerned themselves with the economic results of their decisions. “Today, however, businesses must also reflect on the legal, ethical, moral and social consequences of their decisions” (Anderson 15). This paper will discuss the concept of corporate social responsibility. It will give the definition of the phrase, and identify some of the global factors that necessitate corporate social responsibility. It will discuss the importance of corporations setting up corporate social responsibility projects, and the impact these have on society. Social corporate responsibility and the maintenance of high ethical standards is not an option but an obligation for all business.

Archie Carroll defines corporate social responsibility (CSR) as “the social responsibility of business encompassing the economic, legal, ethical, and discretionary expectations that society has of these organizations at a given point in time.” (Crane, 5) Interesting enough, there has been an abrupt growth of firm’s engagement in CSR within all industries. This is the result of growing requests from the civil society demanding firms, of all sizes, to legitimize their practices. (Crane, 4)

In 1953, the book ‘The social Responsibility of the Businessman’ was published by Howard Bowen and there began the first concrete step towards CSR. The definition of CSR was clearly stated in this book. He exhorted organisations to fall in line with those strategies, to put into practice decisions which are highly valued by our communities or to follow those lines of action

This is essay will focus on analyzing how corporate social responsibility (CSR) influences the investor relations of a corporation and whether it is good for the society, using Gasland and FrackNation as examples. In the contemporary society, CSR sounds like a commendatory term for the society. Over decades, it seems like that both the public and the media are trying to encourage corporations to behave more responsibly, and corporations are gradually becoming more socially aware in the contemporary society because they know they cannot afford the consequence of ignoring it. (Bernstein, 2009:606) However, CSR is not always beneficial. One of the major practices of public relations is investor relations, because the concerns of a corporation’s investors can directly relate to its welfare. When the corporations paid more attention on CSR, their investors will inevitably somehow feel ignored. As a public which has real material input to the corporations, investors are seeking for future returns, they want to be treated specially by the corporations that they invest. Also, value too much about CSR can make corporations become the victim of being morally hijacked, which may harm both a corporation’s financial success and the whole society’s harmony.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has not been around for a long time and it started to gain some movement in the second half of the 20th century (Barnett, n.d.). CSR started out from the 1960’s & 1970’s social activism movements concerning preserving the world for future generations. In 1991, Dr. Archie B. Carroll, a business management author and professor, defined corporate responsibility by using a pyramid shaped diagram. The 4 responsibilities of a business, from the bottom of the pyramid to the top, are economical, legal, ethical and philanthropic. The economic level is foundation of the pyramid and deals with maximizing shareholder earnings, staying

This paper examines the similarities and findings of three academic papers related to Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in accounting. Assumptions are made regarding the importance of CSR to the success of businesses. By looking at three different pieces of literature from the accounting field, there is strong evidence that suggests CSR can be considered an important business function that contributes to profitability. Furthermore, branches of CSR such as Social and Environmental Accounting (SEA) and Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions disclosure play important roles in

The CSR concept appears from the 1960s in the literature on business but took off only from 1990

The recent fifteen years saw a dramatic increase of the corporate social responsibility (CSR) report. There were more than 3300 CSR reports in 2008 while the number of 2002 was less than 100. More and more companies especially some multinational corporations among the world are keen to proving the sustainability, in order to improve their corporate image and credibility (Adams, 2002). This essay will explain why there are an increasing number of companies are willing to make CSR report annually, and discuss whether reporting on social and environmental activities is equal to good social and environmental performance in reality.

Corporate Social Responsibility has been popular strategy among companies. Numerous companies release CSR report and variety of studies have been conducted on different aspect of CSR. Although many researches have been conducted, there are some controversy about concept and effectiveness of CSR. According to the recent study, CSR reports are significantly related to short and long-term measurement of financial performance (Orhan Akisik • Graham Gal, 2014) and M. Tsoutsoura’s date (Tsoutsoura, 2004) indicates that the sings of the relation between CSR and financial performance were positive. In addition, CSR influences