The relationship between corporate social responsibility disclosure and corporate governance characteristics in Malaysian public listed companies

By R. Said, Yuserrie Zainuddin, H. Haron. 2009

744 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between corporate governance characteristics, namely the board size, board independence, duality, audit committee, ten largest shareholders, managerial ownership, foreign ownership and government ownership and the extent of corporate social responsibility disclosure. Design/methodology/approach - The content analysis was used to extract the CSR disclosure items from annual report and companies' web sites. Then, a CSR disclosure index was constructed after combining CSR disclosure items disclosed both in annual reports and in companies' web sites. Hierarchical regression analysis was used to examine the relationship between the corporate social disclosures index and the independent variables, namely the board size, board independence, duality, audit committee, ten largest shareholders, managerial ownership, foreign ownership and government ownership after statistically controlling the effects of a firm's size and the profitability of the companies. Findings - Results based on the full regression models indicated that only two variables were associated with the extent of disclosures, namely government ownership and audit committee. Government ownership and audit committee are positively and significantly correlated with the level of corporate social responsibility disclosure. The most significant variable that influences the level of CSR disclosure is government ownership. Research limitations/implications - The findings are limited to the context of the study and it was limited to Malaysian public listed companies, January to December 2006. The sources of data in this study were companies' annual reports and web sites only. Practical implications - The study is useful to organizations and statutory bodies to take into consideration in identifying the corporate governance characteristics that will enhance CSR disclosure, since it had been shown in previous studies that corporate social responsibility reporting in Malaysia is generally low. The government can determine how important it is that a company should be willing to allocate their costs towards corporate social responsibility activities. Thus, this study will emphasize the level of activities through corporate social responsibility reporting in Malaysian public listed companies and help the government to ascertain the level of corporate social responsibility activities through corporate social responsibility reporting among Malaysian public listed companies. Originality/value - The study reveals the extent of the disclosure of corporate social responsibility to companies web sites and constructed the CSR index based on two sources of data, namely companies' web sites and annual reports.

Subfields: Accounting, Strategy and Management

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/66c0988ceae7d1478456736745a7f04e90bf22ba

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In Accounting

1. Joanna Krasodomska
2. J. Dyduch
3. Waris Ali
4. Elinda Esa
5. A. Haji
6. Zeeshan Mahmood
7. Cemil Kuzey
8. Halil Akbas

In Strategy and Management

1. Joanna Krasodomska
2. J. Dyduch
3. Waris Ali
4. Cemil Kuzey
5. Elinda Esa
6. Merve Kılıç
7. Zeeshan Mahmood
8. A. Haji

Citations in the corpus

• Corporate social responsibility, firm value and financial performance in Brazil (2011, background): “Such studies have evaluated the reasons for social disclosure, the lack of uniformity, the need for audit and even the use of social disclosure as a measure to CSR (Lerner and Fryxell, 1988; Ullman, 1985; Archel et al., 2009; Said et al., 2009; Sutantoputra, 2009).”
• Determinants of Corporate Social Responsibility Disclosure: An Empirical Study of Polish Listed Companies (2017, background): “…own disclosure indexes in order to measure the extent of CSR disclosures (e.g., Verbeeten et al. [42]; Bayoud et al. [44]; Rahman et al. [45]; Said et al. [46]; Haniffa and Cooke [47]; Hussainey et al. [48]; Rouf [49]; Khan [50]; Gamerschlag et al. [51]; Tagesson et al. [53]; Ho and Taylor [55]).”
• The Effect of Corporate Governance Elements on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Disclosure: An Empirical Evidence from Listed Companies at KSE Pakistan (2015, background): “Haniffa and Cooke (2005) [5] and Said et al. (2009) [32] disclose a considerable and constructive association between profitability and the levels of CSR reporting.”
• Does Corporate Governance Affect the Quality of Integrated Reporting? (2020, methodology): “In most of these studies, an index has been frequently used to assess the reporting quality based on the qualitative characteristics [18,20] or guidelines and standard such as the Global Reporting Initiative [25,26].”
• Corporate board characteristics and environmental disclosure quantity: Evidence from South Africa (integrated reporting) and Nigeria (traditional reporting) (2018, background): “…on this important role of audit committee in achieving objectives of corporate governance (Ho & Shun Wong, 2001; Khan, Muttakin, & Siddiqui, 2013; Said, Hj Zainuddin, & Haron, 2009), required a good number of independent members for its effectiveness (Akhtaruddin & Haron, 2010; Bouaziz, 2012;…”
• Determinants of Voluntary Greenhouse Gas Emission Disclosure: An Empirical Investigation on Turkish Firms (2018, background): “According to the Said et al. [97], corporate governance represents an effective tool which can be used for ensuring that the interests of all stakeholders are protected.”
• An Analysis of Corporate Social Responsibility and Firm Performance with Moderating Effects of CEO Power and Ownership Structure: A Case Study of the Manufacturing Sector of Pakistan (2019, background): “At present, the literature verifies that FP can be enhanced by CSR disclosure [79,87,88].”
• Does Corporate Governance Affect Sustainability Disclosure? A Mixed Methods Study (2018, background): “Independent directors act as a scrutinizer and play an imperative role to ensure that the company is appropriately managed [22].”
• Board composition and corporate social responsibility in an emerging market (2016, background): “Studies indicate that the number of Malaysian companies adopting the CSR reporting as still low (Said et al., 2009; Mohamed Zain and Janggu, 2006; Manasseh, 2004; Nik Ahmad and Sulaiman, 2004; Shaw Warn, 2004; Ramasamy and Ting, 2004; Foo and Tan, 1988).”