A Literature Review
Kavitha W * and Anita P **
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is now prominent and evident more than ever due to the emphasis laid on businesses regarding environmental, social and ethical issues. The level of CSR activities of the firms is made known to public only through the disclosures. This paper reviews the literature on CSR disclosures and the effect of these disclosures. There are various factors which determine the extent of disclosures like the size of the firm, industry, high visibility, etc.
Introduction
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is now prominent and evident more than ever due to the emphasis laid on businesses regarding environmental, social and ethical issues. This is because over the recent years, there have been social, political and economic pressures on corporate management to pay attention on social and environmental consequences of corporate activities.
These pressures motivated the corporate management to actively participate in a wide range of social welfare activities. CSR now-a-days covers almost all issues like the use of child labor; inequality of employment; environmental impact; involvement in local community; products’ safety; company cultures; brand image and reputation. Apart from this, companies are now disclosing these activities in their annual reports, and one of the parameters to judge the performance of a company is CSR reporting.
Corporate Social Responsibility
CSR is defined by Naylor (1999) and mentioned in the work of Douglas et al. (2004) as “the obligation of managers to choose and act in ways that benefit both the interests of the organization and those of society as a whole.”
Commission of the European Communities defines CSR as a concept by which “companies decide voluntarily to contribute to a better society and a cleaner environment”. It states that behaving in a socially responsible way amounts to “going beyond