Social reporting: Trends, determinants, and implications

Corporate Social Reporting (CSR) is a key strategic issue for companies and extant research shows a particular trend towards investigation of emerging economies. While generally reporting on social issues is more advanced in the West, it is growing in most regions. This chapter reviews the literature on social reporting, identifying frameworks used, and discusses major determinants and differences between developed and developing countries, with particular attention to governance. The influence of external, institutional factors is observed across both developed and developing countries, but there are also clear differences. Companies in developed countries generally ignore broad social issues such as poverty and human rights. Topics such as modern slavery and human rights are gaining attention, but this has mostly been in developed countries. The review reinforces the importance of diversity, as well as moderating factors such as political, social, organisational, institutional and cultural context or practices in firms’ social disclosure decisions.