Motivations for an organisation within a developing country to report social responsibility information: Evidence from Bangladesh

By Muhammad Azizul Islam, C. Deegan. 2008

682 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Purpose - The aim of the paper is to describe and explain, using a combination of interviews and content analysis, the social and environmental reporting practices of a major garment export organisation within a developing country. Design/methodology/approach - Senior executives from a major organisation in Bangladesh are interviewed to determine the pressures being exerted on them in terms of their social and environmental performance. The perceptions of pressures are then used to explain – via content analysis – changing social and environmental disclosure practices. Findings - The results show that particular stakeholder groups have, since the early 1990s, placed pressure on the Bangladeshi clothing industry in terms of its social performance. This pressure, which is also directly related to the expectations of the global community, in turn drives the industry's social policies and related disclosure practices. Research limitations/implications - The findings show that, within the context of a developing country, unless we consider the managers' perceptions about the social and environmental expectations being imposed upon them by powerful stakeholder groups then we will be unable to understand organisational disclosure practices. Originality/value - This paper is the first known paper to interview managers from a large organisation in a developing country about changing stakeholder expectations and then link these changing expectations to annual report disclosures across an extended period of analysis.

Subfields: Marketing, Strategy and Management

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/434b052cc39e51e2e8c91caf91884cac85ad78d8

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Marketing

1. M. Muttakin
2. Waris Ali
3. Arifur Khan
4. J. Frynas
5. S. Cooper
6. T. Soobaroyen
7. A. Belal
8. Collins G. Ntim

In Strategy and Management

1. Waris Ali
2. M. Muttakin
3. J. Frynas
4. T. Soobaroyen
5. Arifur Khan
6. Collins G. Ntim
7. S. Cooper
8. A. Belal

Citations in the corpus

• Corporate Social Responsibility in Developing Countries as an Emerging Field of Study (2018, neutral): “…community and the proliferation of international standards of CSR that define corporate obligations in more explicit ways (e.g. Gugler and Shi 2009; Islam and Deegan 2008), coupled by the continued local predominance of corporate philanthropy (Amaeshi et al. 2006; Oyungerel and Lkhagvasuren 2011;…”
• Corporate Governance and Corporate Social Responsibility Disclosures: Evidence from an Emerging Economy (2012, background): “The role of ‘powerful’ stakeholder groups was also mentioned by Islam and Deegan (2008) as the principal driving force for CSR disclosures in Bangladesh.”
• Black Economic Empowerment Disclosures by South African Listed Corporations: The Influence of Ownership and Board Characteristics (2012, background): “Third, legitimacy theory (LT) suggests that a corpora-tion’s right to exist is legitimised if its value system is consistent with that of the larger social system of which it is part of, but threatened when potential/actual differences emerge between the two value systems (Islam and Deegan 2008).”
• The Effect of Corporate Governance Elements on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Disclosure: An Empirical Evidence from Listed Companies at KSE Pakistan (2015, background): “For this reason, some researchers adapt a multi-theoretical framework to expound the scope and significance of environmental disclosure [25].”
• Media pressures and corporate disclosure of social responsibility performance information: A study of two global clothing and sports retail companies (2010, background): “…and Lewis, 2005; Landrum, 2001).1 Predominantly, the decision by many multinational companies to source products from developing countries has been motivated by the relatively low costs of obtaining products and services from these countries (Wilkins, 2000; Custers, 1997; Kabeer and Mahmud, 2004).”
• Theoretical Perspectives on Corporate Social Responsibility Disclosure: A Critical Review (2015, background): “A majority of CSR studies carried in Bangladesh (Islam and Deegan, 2008; Belal and Owen, 2007; Rashid, 2015) adopt the stakeholder approach due to the existence of powerful buyers (stakeholders) from Western countries.”
• Determinants of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Disclosure in Developed and Developing Countries: A Literature Review (2017, background): “…international buyers (Belal & Owen, 2007; Islam & Deegan, 2008), foreign investors (Teoh & Thong, 1984; Belal & Owen, 2007; Khan et al., 2013; Chiu & Wang, 2014), international media concerns (Islam & Deegan, 2008) and international regulatory bodies such as the World Bank (Rahaman et al., 2004).”
• Women in the boardroom and their impact on climate change related disclosure (2017, background): “It is also noted that the current literature emphasises the importance of carbon relevant risk disclosure of firms given the planetary boundaries, which are perceived as resource scarcity (Deegan, 2002; Parker, 2005; Islam and Deegan, 2008; Liao et al., 2015: Guenther et al., 2016).”
• Factors affecting corporate social responsibility disclosure in Egypt (2011, background): “…so far in context of developed countries like United States (US), United Kingdom (UK), Japan and Australia (Belal and Owen, 2007; Gray et al., 1995; Islam and Deegan, 2008), other studies have been done in other developed countries including Canada, Germany and New Zealand, which indicate that the…”