Determinants of Corporate Social Responsibility Disclosure Ratings by Spanish Listed Firms

By Carmelo Reverte. 2009

1,298 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The aim of this paper is to analyze whether a number of firm and industry characteristics, as well as media exposure, are potential determinants of corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure practices by Spanish listed firms. Empirical studies have shown that CSR disclosure activism varies across companies, industries, and time (Gray et al., Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal8(2), 47–77, 1995; Journal of Business Finance & Accounting28(3/4), 327–356, 2001; Hackston and Milne, Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal9(1), 77–108, 1996; Cormier and Magnan, Journal of International Financial Management and Accounting1(2), 171–195, 2003; Cormier et al., European Accounting Review14(1), 3–39, 2005), which is usually justified by reference to several theoretical constructs, such as the legitimacy, stakeholder, and agency theories. Our findings evidence that firms with higher CSR ratings present a statistically significant larger size and a higher media exposure, and belong to more environmentally sensitive industries, as compared to firms with lower CSR ratings. However, neither profitability nor leverage seem to explain differences in CSR disclosure practices between Spanish listed firms. The most influential variable for explaining firms’ variation in CSR ratings is media exposure, followed by size and industry. Therefore, it seems that the legitimacy theory, as captured by those variables related to public or social visibility, is the most relevant theory for explaining CSR disclosure practices of Spanish listed firms.

Subfields: Accounting, Marketing, Strategy and Management

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/727b0e1442357492406dce3d092cbcf201b585bf

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Citations in the corpus

Determinants of Social Disclosure Quality in Taiwan: An Application of Stakeholder Theory (2014, background): “As regards the control variables, our results support the suggestions that ﬁrm size and media exposure may act as intervening variables in empirical tests focusing on CSD (e.g., Purushothaman et al. 2000; Branco and Rodrigues 2008; Reverte 2009).”
The influence of board characteristics on sustainability reporting Empirical evidence from Sri Lankan firms (2014, background): “Introduction Research on social and environmental reporting continues to garner interest and a research stream has emerged, investigating the effect of firm-specific characteristics onsocial and environmental reporting (Adams et al., 1998; Brammer and Pavelin, 2008; Chapple and Moon, 2005; Gao et al”
Black Economic Empowerment Disclosures by South African Listed Corporations: The Influence of Ownership and Board Characteristics (2012, methodology): “For example, SA 1973 Companies and 1990 Bank Acts set different CG rules for financials; (ii) they have unique capital structure (highly geared), which impacts on their CG and performance differently; and (iii) their exclusion can facilitate comparisons with prior studies (Brammer and Pavelin 2008; ”
Corporate social responsibility reporting and organizational stigma: the case of "sin" industries. (2016, background): “legitimacy upon their role (Reverte, 2009) by disclosing significant information regarding their CSR activities (Gray et al.”
Corporate social responsibility, board of directors, and firm performance: an analysis of their relationships (2014, background): “…‘‘sensitive’’ sectors (mining, oil, gas, chemicals, paper, iron and steel and other metals, electricity, gas and water distribution) and 0 otherwise (Reverte 2009; Zeng et al. 2012).4 We also included annual dummies5 to analyse if the years considered in our sample had the same effect on…”
Determinants of Corporate Social Responsibility Disclosure: An Empirical Study of Polish Listed Companies (2017, methodology): “Companies usually inform stakeholders of their CSR activities in the annual report or in separate CSR reports [41,42].”
The Determinants Of Corporate Social Responsibility Disclosure: Evidence From China (2013, background): “Individual firms’ media exposure, which is generally employed as a proxy for social visibility, is likely to be associated with more CSRD (Bansal, 2005; Brammer and Pavelin, 2008; Branco and Rodrigues, 2008; Reverte, 2009).”
Impact of corporate social responsibility initiatives on Taiwanese banking customers (2011, background): “Empirical investigations of CSR practices have produced a very diverse body of academic literature, which engage different theoretical perspectives, including stakeholder theory ( Reverte, 2009”