Level of Compromise with CSR through Reporting: Factors Affecting Behavior of Companies

• In Event: Corporate Social Responsibility and Related Issues

Abstract

We conduct a four-group analysis, based on four categories of social behavior of companies, through CSR reporting. For that purpose, we combine two variables defining reporting, disclosure and credibility, and we assign them two levels, high and low. This setting deals four possible behaviours to our model: Low level, Pre-compromise, Marketing and Responsible. The first one, “Low level” includes companies with no compromise with CSR reporting. These companies disclose the minimum amount of information, mandated or not by their regulations, and do not provide assurance with the report, since it is not required, reducing its credibility. The second group, “Pre-compromise” includes companies that do not disclose in depth, but that show a commitment with CSR by including credibility tools. The third group, “Marketing” includes companies that use SR as a marketing strategy. They disclose a high amount of information, but they do not add elements that would be used to evaluate its quality or credibility. Finally, the fourth group, “Responsible” includes companies with high levels of disclosure and credibility.
Our results show that public companies disclose more CSR information than private ones, but these are more likely to give more credibility to their CSR reports than public ones. European countries are leading the rank in CSR information and our results show that they have a Pre-compromise or Responsible attitude. Finally, we report differences among industries.

Authors

• Belen Fernandez-Feijoo, Universidade de Vigo

• Silvia Romero, Montclair State University

• Silvia Ruiz, Universidade de Vigo