Determinants of voluntary CSR disclosure: empirical evidence from Germany

By R. Gamerschlag, Klaus Möller, F. Verbeeten. 2011

883 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Currently, companies spend a great deal of effort on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) disclosures. CSR disclosure relates to the provision of information on companies’ environmental and social performance. From an economic perspective, companies might disclose this information to avoid or decrease potential political costs. We construct a CSR disclosure index based on the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) guidelines. Using content analysis, we analyze 130 listed German companies’ CSR disclosures (470 firm-year observations) to investigate the determinants of these voluntary disclosure activities. Our results show that, consistent with the political cost theory, German companies’ disclosures of all CSR issues are affected by their visibility, shareholder structure, and relationship with their US stakeholders. In addition, higher profitability is associated with more environmental disclosures. Finally, size and industry membership affect the amount of CSR disclosure.

Subfields: Accounting, Strategy and Management

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/1b6edaac2bd241c18ce6cf126e9f2fe9ad8ea68d

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Citations in the corpus

Corporate sustainability: an integrative definition and framework to evaluate corporate practice and guide academic research (2014, background): “In a somewhat similar perspective, political cost theory suggests that organizations engage in communications regarding sustainability activities in order to minimize adverse political costs and consequences (Gamerschlag et al., 2011).”
Corporate social responsibility reporting and organizational stigma: the case of "sin" industries. (2016, background): “Firstly, insider ownership is associated with more inward-looking management policies, which quite often exclusively focus on short-term value-maximising activities (Gamerschlag et al. , 2011; Oh et al. , 2011).”
Comprehensive Board Diversity and Quality of Corporate Social Responsibility Disclosure: Evidence from an Emerging Market (2017, background): “…disclosure has been proven to be associated with lower cost of capital (Dhali-wal et al. 2011; Gonc¸alves et al. 2013) and lesser political costs (Gamerschlag et al. 2010), decrease the share volatility (Jayasree 2013) and improve the value relevance of the CSR information to the investors…”
Factors Influencing Levels of Corporate Social Responsibility Disclosure by Libyan Firms: A Mixed Study (2012, background): “CSR refers to a company’s voluntary contribution to sustainable development which goes beyond legal requirements (Gamerschlag et al., 2010).”
Disclosure on the Sustainable Development Goals – Evidence from Europe (2021, neutral): “…empirical studies tend to support this relationship both for media coverage in general and critical media coverage in particular (Branco & Rodrigues, 2008; Brown & Deegan, 1998; Cormier & Magnan, 2003; Gamerschlag et al., 2011; Gillet-Monjarret, 2015; Guenther et al., 2016; Rupley et al., 2012).”
Are CSR disclosures relevant for investors? Empirical evidence from Germany (2016, positive): “Finally, previous studies (Cormier et al. , 2005; Gamerschlag et al. , 2011) have discussed the determinants of CSR disclosure in Germany; we extend this line of literature by focussing on the financial consequences of CSR disclosures in the German institutional setting.”
Organizing Corporate Social Responsibility in Small and Large Firms: Size Matters (2011, neutral): “More generally, it has been shown that formalized CSR reporting is negatively correlated with firm size (Gamerschlag et al. 2011).”