Standalone Corporate Social Responsibility Reporting in China: An Exploratory Analysis of its Relation to Legitimation

Patten, Dennis M.; Ren, Yi; Zhao, Na

doi:10.1080/0969160x.2015.1007467

Cited by 31 publications

(28 citation statements)

References 35 publications

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“…On the other hand, proposals concerning changes to the governance structure address, on average, better CSR performers, smaller but less profitable companies. Finally, companies that are targeted for more transparency are poorer CSR performers, bigger and less profitable, which is consistent with the sustainability reporting literature (see Patten, Ren, and Zhao (2015) for an example). Collectively, this exploration shows that a unique profile of targeted companies does not appear to exist.…”

Section: Degree Of Successsupporting

confidence: 75%

Demand for CSR: Insights from Shareholder Proposals

Michelon

Rodrigue

2015

Social and Environmental Accountability Journal

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all participants at the 3 rd CSEAR France for their useful comments. We are grateful to the Chaire de recherche en gouvernance de sociétés of the Université Laval for providing funding for this project. We also thank Janie-Claude Bouchard and Marie-Ève Buist for their helpful research assistance. 2 DEMAND FOR CSR: INSIGHTS FROM SHAREHOLDER PROPOSALS ABSTRACTMotivated by the increasing popularity and attention shareholder proposals on CSR attract, the purpose of this study is to provide a detailed portrayal of shareholders' demands for CSR through their proposals. To this end, we conduct a descriptive longitudinal study of the CSR proposals submitted to US corporations for the fiscal years 1996 to 2009. We use a unique coding process in which we identify both the CSR area of concern to the shareholders and the desired effect the proposal is intended to stimulate on the corporation. Our findings expose how shareholders engage with corporations mostly around the issues of governance and environment, requesting more transparency from the companies and sometimes improved actions or business decisions. Firms from a wide range of industries are targeted, with their levels of CSR performance, profitability and size attracting different kinds of requests in terms of CSR areas and expected outcomes for the corporation. Shareholders can be relatively intense in their requests for CSR, with the majority of the firms in our sample being targeted more than once a year by CSR proposals. Our study deepens our understanding of shareholders' concerns and requests for improvements in CSR.

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Section: Degree Of Successsupporting

confidence: 75%

Demand for CSR: Insights from Shareholder Proposals

Michelon

Rodrigue

2015

Social and Environmental Accountability Journal

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“…In more recent years, the development and establishment of the GRI guidelines have influenced non-financial disclosure practices to change from a sporadic phenomenon to a systematic activity that involves further strategic aspects, such as firms' risk and opportunities, anti-corruption, corporate governance, and fraud matters management [14,38,39].…”

Section: Literature Review and Theoretical Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ensuring More Sustainable Reporting in Europe Using Non-Financial Disclosure—De Facto and De Jure Evidence

et al. 2018

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Non-financial disclosure has become increasingly popular, as it can satisfy the information needs of a growing range of stakeholders. Because traditional financial reports cannot provide comprehensive accountability, several frameworks and guidelines for facilitating non-financial information disclosure have been developed. Recently, the European Union issued Directive 2014/95/EU (EU Directive) and subsequent guidelines (EU Guidelines 2017/C215/01 [EUG]) to mandate European entities of public interest to convey non-financial information to improve such organizations' accountability toward their stakeholders. This paper studies the European stage of non-financial reporting from a regulatory and practical point of view. To this end, the first research objective is to analyze the elements that the EUG have in common with the IIRF and the GRI 4 guidelines. Second, the paper proposes a first analysis to assess the compliance to the EUG by performing a content analysis on a sample of annual reports and integrated reports (IR) drafted by the 50 biggest European companies. The results highlight that the content elements required by the Directive exceed the requirements of the two frameworks and that there is already a high level of compliance by European big companies with the EUG. More specifically, particular attention is devoted to Social, Employee and Environmental Matters. Accordingly, the companies demonstrated a common awareness of the necessity to provide an exhaustive amount of social and environmental disclosure in order to maintain legitimacy. Also the disclosure on Principal Risks and Their Management is widespread to meet investors' and stakeholders' requirements in recent years with respect to the general level of risk disclosure provided by companies.

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“…Some researchers conceive CSR reporting as a means by which SOEs maintain their political legitimacy and material gains (e.g. political standings, state subsidies, national loan exemptions, and operation licence) from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)-ruled political regime (Lee et al, 2017, Luo et al, 2017, Marquis and Qian, 2014, Patten et al, 2015, Situ and Tilt, 2012, whereas others argue that SOEs are owned and governed by the state government and thus there is no point for them to utilise CSR reporting to obtain legitimacy from the government. While the government is referred to as the main driver for SOEs' CSR reporting, few studies have appeared to denote the growing impact of non-governmental bodies (e.g.…”

Section: Csr Reporting In Chinamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In the context of Chinese economic development and the social and environmental consequences arising from it, a body of knowledge is emerging that examines Chinese SEA practices. Previous Chinese studies (Patten et al, 2015, Du and Gray, 2013, Marquis and Qian, 2014, Zhao and Patten, 2016) that examined the drivers for CSR reporting were mainly cross sectional in nature and missed the opportunity to provide in-depth insights offered by field-based case study approaches. The lack of field-based Chinese CSR reporting case studies is confirmed by a recent survey of research methods used in previous research .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Authoritarian state, global expansion and corporate social responsibility reporting: The narrative of a Chinese state-owned enterprise

Belal

2018

Accounting Forum

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This case study examines why stand-alone Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) reporting has been initiated in a Chinese state-owned enterprise (SOE). Chinese SOEs have been pioneering CSR reporting since the mid-2000s and extant literature interprets its development as no more than a consequence of government interventions. However, there is a dearth of qualitative evidence illuminating the subtle interrelationships between the global, national and internal organisational dynamics mediating CSR reporting initiative of Chinese SOEs within the authoritarian state. To fill this gap, we provide a nuanced multi-level institutional analysis of the drivers underlying the initiation of CSR reporting within the case examined.

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Standalone Corporate Social Responsibility Reporting in China: An Exploratory Analysis of its Relation to Legitimation

Cited by 31 publications

References 35 publications

Demand for CSR: Insights from Shareholder Proposals

Demand for CSR: Insights from Shareholder Proposals

Ensuring More Sustainable Reporting in Europe Using Non-Financial Disclosure—De Facto and De Jure Evidence

Authoritarian state, global expansion and corporate social responsibility reporting: The narrative of a Chinese state-owned enterprise

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