BSE Fifka 2011

Business Strategy and the Environment
Bus. Strat. Env. (2011)

Published online in Wiley Online Library
(wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/bse.729
Corporate Responsibility Reporting and its

Determinants in Comparative Perspective
a Review of the Empirical Literature and
a Meta-analysis
Matthias S. Fifka1,2*
1
Dr Juergen Meyer Endowed Professor for International Business Ethics and Sustainability
Cologne Business School (CBS), Hardefuststrasse 1, 50677 Kln, Germany
2
Visiting Professor for Monte Ahuja College of Business, Cleveland State University, Ohio,USA
ABSTRACT
For four decades, reporting on corporate responsibility by businesses has been the subject
of empirical research. In the 1970s and 1980s, studies mostly originated from Anglo-Saxon
and Western European countries. During the last two decades research on responsibility
reporting was increasingly undertaken in emerging and developing countries as well
always following the reporting practices of the respective businesses. Consequentially, a very
large number of studies exist today. Many of these have empirically investigated the determi-
nants of responsibility reporting and examined whether internal factors like size and industry
or external factors like stakeholder pressures have an impact on disclosure. Thus, the
purpose of the following paper is twofold. First, it seeks to provide an overview of the
existing literature in order to facilitate further research. Overall, 186 studies have been
examined for the determinants which they considered and have been grouped according
to their geographical origin. This provides for an analysis of whether academics from different
regions have taken different approaches to the empirical examination of responsibility
reporting and if their results differed. The ndings show that scholars across regions have
taken different paths in empirical research, but indications for a variation in the impact of
specic determinants on reporting are weak. Copyright 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and
ERP Environment
Received 29 November 2010; revised 29 June 2011; accepted 11 July 2011

Keywords: sustainability; sustainable development; corporate responsibility; environmental policy; accountability; social and
environmental reporting; disclosure; literature review; meta-analysis
*Correspondence to: Matthias S. Fifka, Dr Juergen Meyer Endowed Professor for International Business Ethics and Sustainability, Cologne Business
School (CBS), Hardefuststrasse 1, 50677 Kln, Germany.E-mail: m.fka@cbs-edu.de
Copyright 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment
M.S. Fifka
Introduction
E
MPIRICAL RESEARCH ON THE REPORTING PRACTICES OF BUSINESSES HAS ALWAYS GONE HAND IN HAND WITH THE RESPEC-
tive developments in corporate reporting. Therefore, traditional and obligatory nancial statements were
the rst kind of reports to undergo academic analysis, while the examination of non-nancial reporting
is rather recent and has its origins in the 1970s. During that decade, large corporations in western indus-
trialized countries increasingly began to publish information on their product quality, equal opportunities and social
benets for their employees, and their contributions to the communities where they operated. These issues reected
the criticisms that [were] being encountered by the modern corporation and also [were] the targets of governmental
regulation (Abbott and Monsen, 1979, p. 506; see also Dierkes, 1979). The resulting calls for the disclosure of in-
formation, as Gray et al. (1990) observe, were targeted especially at multinational corporations (MNCs) in the
1970s, when their power to control and move resources internationally became a subject of worldwide concern
(p. 598). The information demanded was mainly disclosed in the regular annual report, which soon became a sub-
ject of academic analysis. Already in 1973, Dennis Beresford, a partner in the consulting company Ernst & Ernst,
directed a study on the social measurement disclosures of the Fortune 500 companies in the United States. Sub-
sequent studies followed in 1975 and 1976. Other authors also began to empirically examine social disclosure in an-
nual reports (Parket and Eilbrit, 1975; Bowman and Haire, 1976; Abbott and Monsen, 1979) or to make
recommendations for its design (Epstein et al., 1976).
In addition to providing information in the annual report, corporations began to produce stand-alone social
reports or social balance sheets, as some were named, in order to address external calls for disclosure. These were
published especially by businesses from western Europe, which Bebbington et al. appropriately called the
vanguard of these developments (2000, p. 3; see also Adams et al., 1998). As a consequence, empirical studies
on social reports were primarily conducted with a country focus in the second half of the 1970s (Budaeus, 1977;
Grjer and Stark, 1977; Dierkes, 1979; Schreuder, 1979; Ullmann, 1979; Brockhoff, 1979), though a few
internationally comparative studies were published as well (Lessem, 1977; Schoenfeld, 1978). Overall, two important
developments can be noted for the 1970s. First, there was an expansion of reporting practices from nancial to
non-nancial mostly social issues. Second, new media such as stand-alone reports were used by businesses
to convey the respective information.
In the 1980s, research on voluntary reporting by businesses remained, as the reporting itself, focused on social
issues (Ullmann, 1985; Cowen et al., 1987; McGuire et al., 1988; Belkaoui and Karpik, 1989). Nevertheless, some early
studies that dealt exclusively with the slowly increasing practice of environmental disclosure were also conducted
(Ingram and Frazier, 1980; Chen and Metcalf, 1980; Wiseman, 1982; Rockness, 1985; Freedman and Jaggi, 1988).
A decade later, the focus shifted from social to environmental reporting as businesses gradually realized that the
introduction of environmentally friendly products and production methods could bring signicant comparative
advantages (Welford and Gouldson, 1993; Azzone and Bertele, 1994; Dechant and Altman, 1994; Welford, 1995;
Azzone et al., 1996a, 1996b). Thus, the environmental report as such became a certain standard among large cor-
porations and often replaced the social report that had been published before. In line with that change, empirical
studies also began to shift their attention from social to environmental reporting, although it has to be said that
the social dimension did not disappear neither in non-nancial reporting nor in empirical research (Zghal and
Ahmed, 1990; Roberts, 1992b; Tilt, 1994; Robertson and Nicholson, 1996; Adams et al., 1996; Clarke and
Gibson-Sweet, 1999).
In fact, after the turn of the millennium, the separation of social and environmental reporting was reversed and
both dimensions were merged in non-nancial reports of a broader nature, mostly issued under titles such as
Sustainability Report, Corporate (Social) Responsibility Report or Corporate Citizenship Report. In addition,
economic issues were included as well, following Elkingtons triple bottom line approach (1997) that built on
the understanding of sustainability as dened by the World Commission on Environment and Development, often
called the Brundlandt Commission, in 1987.
This development has also been reected in the empirical literature. Whereas most of the older studies had
explicitly examined social or environmental reporting, more recent studies often referred to sustainability,
corporate social responsibility or responsibility reporting (Rikhardsson et al., 2002; Hedberg and von Malmborg,
Copyright 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment Bus. Strat. Env. (2011)
DOI: 10.1002/bse
Corporate Responsibility Reporting and its Determinants
2003; Kolk, 2003, 2004; Clausen et al., 2005; ODwyer et al., 2005; Daub and Karlsson, 2006; Stiller and Daub,
2007; Delbard, 2008; Kolk, 2008; Gebauer and Hoffmann, 2009; Vormedal and Ruud, 2009; Borga et al.,
2009; Morhardt, 2010). This change in business reporting also becomes clearly visible in the titles of the international
surveys conducted by KPMG six times since 1993. While the rst three studies from the years 1993, 1997 and 1999
were published under the title International Survey of Environmental Reporting, the 2002 study referred to Sustain-
ability Reporting, and the last two studies (KPMG, 2005, 2008) to Corporate Responsibility Reporting. This modi-
cation of titles pays tribute to the increasing breadth and variety of reporting, as Corporate Responsibility Reporting
can be considered the most comprehensive term of the ones used. Therefore, it will also be used in the following study.
Moreover, the KPMG studies also reect the increasing geographical scope of responsibility reporting and its
spread to emerging and developing countries. In the study of 1993, KPMG evaluated the environmental reports
of the 100 largest companies in each of 10 industrialized countries in North America and Europe. In 1996, the study
was expanded to 13 countries, now also including Australia and New Zealand, and thus, a third continent. In 2002,
19 countries were part of the survey, and with the inclusion of Japan and South Africa at least one country from each
continent was considered for the rst time. Finally, in 2008, KPMG examined responsibility reporting in 22
countries, among them emerging markets like Brazil, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Mexico and Romania.
Aside from the geographical spread of responsibility reporting, it has also grown in terms of the media used for
disclosure. The internet in particular has enabled businesses to report at lower cost, to update information more fre-
quently, and to reach a wider audience that can also be engaged interactively (Isenmann and Lenz, 2001; Isenmann
and Lenz, 2002; Adams and Frost, 2006). As a consequence, many empirical studies have explicitly examined this
new form of disclosure in the last decade (Morhardt, 2001; Bonsn and Escobar, 2002; Rikhardsson et al., 2002;
Peck and Sinding, 2003; Campbell and Beck, 2004; Chapple and Moon, 2005; Haddock, 2005; Chaudhri
and Wang, 2007; Pollach et al., 2009; Tagesson et al., 2009; Rodrguez and Snes, 2004; Rodrguez, 2009;
Morhardt, 2010). On the whole, responsibility reporting today is conducted by businesses on all continents, and
it comes in various forms and under various names.
The academic literature on the subject is as wide as corporate responsibility reporting itself. Scholars have made
normative suggestions on the contents of and necessity for responsibility reporting, provided managerial instruc-
tions, established measurements to rank reports and judge their quality, or empirically approached the topic.
Among the latter, a great number of studies have paid specic attention to the determinants that inuence respon-
sibility reporting, such as internal factors like size, industry and protability, or external factors, e.g. public pressure
and political regulation.
Thus, the purpose of the following article is threefold. First, it seeks to provide the reader with an overview of
empirical research that has been done on the determinants of responsibility reporting. One hundred and eighty-
six studies are considered in depth and grouped according to their geographical origin. This is the basis for the sec-
ond objective, which is to examine whether researchers from different regions have focused on different potential
determinants of reporting and if they have come to different results. Before the research objectives and the meth-
odology are explained in detail, a short overview of existing literature reviews on responsibility reporting is provided.
Existing Reviews of Studies on Responsibility Reporting

Due to the great variety of literature on responsibility reporting, literature reviews have taken different approaches in
order to discuss existing publications. In the earliest review known to the author, Roberts (1992a), in the rst vol-
ume of Business Strategy and the Environment, used a functional classication divided into general themes and
issues, operational matters, and sector studies (p. 41) to categorize existing works. Moreover, his review was con-
ned to publications from the UK dealing with environmental aspects.
Berthelot et al. (2003) as well as Lee and Hutchinson (2004) also limited their studies to environmentally related
publications, but took a clear focus on empirical studies. Berthelot et al. distinguished between literature on volun-
tary disclosure, on mandatory disclosure and on external disclosure. Within the three categories they further classi-
ed studies that dealt with the decision to disclose, those which examined the value relevance of disclosure and
those which were concerned with the reliability of the information provided. Overall, 61 studies were looked at in
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M.S. Fifka
more detail, all originating from English-speaking countries. Lee and Hutchinson (2004) used a different classica-
tion for their review by addressing the forces affecting the decision to disclose environmental information (p. 83).
With regard to these forces, they differentiated between ve groups: (1) laws and regulations, (2) legitimacy, public
pressure and publicity, (3) rm/industry characteristics, (4) rational costbenet analysis, and (5) cultural forces and
attitudes. The review itself was limited to studies from the accounting discipline, published in the respective jour-
nals. Adams (2002) used a similar structure for a broader review of literature to introduce her own study. With re-
gard to the factors that determine responsibility reporting, she distinguished between studies which examined
corporate characteristics, general contextual factors and the internal context (pp. 223224).
Another approach used for many literature reviews is a chronological one. This approach has been taken by
authors of literature reviews on corporate responsibility (e.g. Matthews, 1997) and by authors who have given a
broader literature overview to introduce their own empirical studies (e.g. Morhardt, 2010). Matthews (1997), in
his review of social and environmental accounting research (p. 481), identied three time periods 1971 until
1980, 1981 until 1990, and 1991 until 1995 for overall organization of the literature discussed. Within these
groups he distinguished between empirical studies, normative statements, philosophical discussion, the non-
accounting literature, teaching programmes and text books, regulatory frameworks, and other reviews of the literature
(p. 482). The literature reviewed is exclusively in English and mostly originated from accounting journals. Morhardt
(2010), in his extensive study on the corporate social responsibility and sustainability reporting on the internet
(p. 436) of 454 companies, gave a brief overview of 53 studies in chronological order and described the samples these
studies contained as well as their topics and results. He also considered only publications in English, again mostly
from academic journals.
A literature review by Gray et al. (1995a) applied yet another methodology. Instead of a chronological approach,
the authors differentiated according to theories which were used by the studies they reviewed. Thus, they distin-
guished between decision-usefulness studies, economic theory studies, and social and political theory studies
(p. 50). Consequentially, their review is limited to studies which have taken the related theoretical approaches.
Research Objectives and Methodology

As the discussion of existing literature reviews shows, there are several ways to classify and examine studies on re-
sponsibility reporting. The following review uses an approach related to the ones applied by Morhardt (2010),
Adams (2002) and Lee and Hutchinson (2004). It will only consider empirical studies that dealt with the analysis
of factors inuencing responsibility reporting. These factors will be separated into internal factors and those which
lie outside the company. Examples for the former are size or industry membership, while examples for the latter are
regulation, cultural variables or stakeholder expectations.
Aside from these similarities to the reviews by Morhardt, Adams and Lee and Hutchinson, the objective of the
following review is completely different. While as with any review it seeks to provide an overview of existing pub-
lications (RO1), it attempts to analyze if the approaches to the empirical investigation of responsibility reporting dif-
fer with regard to countries or regions (RO2). The third objective (RO3) consists of the examination of whether
individual determinants have been found to have a different impact on reporting in the regions considered.
Concerning the literature included in this review, this study is substantially more comprehensive than the ones
described above and takes into account almost 200 individual studies. It considers studies which looked at one or
more forms of corporate responsibility reporting. Only empirical contributions made to academic journals and
books as well as relevant reports published by private or public organizations were considered. Journalistic publica-
tions and rankings were not included, as they usually do not deal with internal or external factors that inuence en-
vironmental reporting. Moreover, two types of studies were considered: those which aimed directly at responsibility
reporting, and those which used this type of reporting as a proxy for other characteristics such as social or environ-
mental performance, or policies towards stakeholders.
As shortly described above, this body of literature will be referred to as responsibility reporting in order to apply a
broad term that is as comprehensive as possible. In contrast to other studies which have predominantly considered
publications from English-speaking or other industrialized countries in this regard, the study by Morhardt (2010)
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is the broadest with respect to geographical scope the study here also gives great attention to studies from emerg-
ing or developing countries in order to pursue the research objectives described above. Nevertheless, as existing
reviews have previously done, only publications in English were considered. It must be noted at this point that em-
pirical studies on responsibility reporting have also been published in other languages. However, in order to avoid
any bias towards the countries whose language the author of this paper is capable of understanding,1 it was decided
to include solely publications in the international lingua franca of science, namely English.
Lastly, it has to be said that this review does not claim to encompass all existing studies dealing with responsibil-
ity reporting, since their great number would render such a claim irresponsible or even illusionary.
Findings
As has been mentioned, the structure of this review is based upon geography in order to examine whether research
approaches with regard to responsibility reporting differ across countries or regions. The following review rst looks
at studies from industrialized countries, where responsibility reporting originated, and then moves on to emerging
and developing countries. Finally, studies which compare countries on different continents will be examined. An
overview of the studies, their date of publication, the countries and samples they considered, the media analyzed
as well as the determinants examined and results obtained is provided in Table 1.
North America
Without question North America has been one of the spearheads of empirical research on responsibility reporting.
This not only holds true for the United States but for Canada as well, from where a signicant number of studies
have originated.
United States
As Table 1 shows, the relation between nancial performance and responsibility reporting, also as a measure for
social or environmental performance, has received much attention in studies on American companies. This reects
the strong liberal notion of American capitalism. Most of the existing studies examined whether nancial
performance has an inuence on the extent of responsibility reporting. A positive correlation was found by Parket
and Eilbrit (1975), Fry and Hock (1976), Preston (1978), Cochran and Wood (1984), Roberts (1992b), Stanwick and
Stanwick (1998a, 1998b) and Alnajjar (2000). Nevertheless, there are also studies which have shown no correlation
between nancial performance and the extent of corporate responsibility and related reporting (Chen and Metcalf,
1980; Cowen et al., 1987; Freedman and Jaggi, 1988; Patten, 1991; Stanny and Ely, 2008; Clarkson et al., 2008).
Vance (1975) as well as Ingram and Frazier (1983) even found a negative correlation.
It is interesting to note that several authors also considered an inverse relationship. They examined responsibility
reporting as the independent variable and nancial performance as the dependent variable. This approach was taken
by Belkaoui (1976), Bowman (1978) (see also Bowman, 1984), Spicer (1978), Anderson and Frankle (1980) and
Shane and Spicer (1983), who all found a positive correlation, although they measured protability/nancial perfor-
mance differently.
Other company characteristics that have been examined frequently as internal determinants of disclosure
are size and industry. The results are coherent to a high degree as most US studies have shown both variables
to positively correlate with reporting. A positive inuence of size on reporting was found by Spicer (1978),
Chen and Metcalf (1980), Cowen et al. (1987), Patten (1991, 1992), Esrock and Leichty (1998), Alnajjar (2000),
Stanny and Ely (2008) and Morhardt (2010). Patten (1991) used size as well as industry as proxies for public pres-
sure assuming that larger companies and those in environmentally sensitive industries are more exposed to
public pressure and detected a positive correlation too. Industry has also been shown to be a determinant of
1
It could certainly be argued here that this approach leads to a bias in favor of English speaking countries.
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M.S. Fifka
Authors Year(s) Countries External determinants analyzed Internal determinants (company

examined* characteristics) analyzed
NORTH AMERICA: Canada (CA), United States (US)

Abbott & Monsen 1979 US Criticism and public pressure Financial performance as
(+) dependent variable (+)
Alciatore et al. 2004 US Regulation (+)
Alnajjar 2000 US Financial performance (+)
Anderson & Frankle 1980 US Financial performance as
dependent variable (+)
Belkaoui 1976 US Financial performance as
Belkaoui & Karpik 1989 US Political visibility (+) measured Size (+)
by proxies size and systematic Social performance (+)
risk Systematic risk (+)
Beresford 1973, US Size (+)
1975,
1976
Beresford & Feldman 1976 US Industry (+)
Bewley & Li 2000 CA Media coverage (+) Pollution propensity (+)
Political exposure (+)
Bowman 1978 US Financial performance as
Bowman & Haire 1976 US Industry (+)
Buhr & Freedman 2001 CA, US History (+)
Geography (+)
Political system (+)
Legal system (+)
Business climate (+)
Chen & Metcalf 1980 US Size (+)
Financial performance (0)
Clarkson et al. 2008 US Financial performance (0)
Form of ownership (0)
Environmental performance (+)
Cochran & Wood 1984 US Financial performance (+)
Age of assets (+)
Cormier & Gordon 2001 CA Size (+)
Ownership status (+)
Information costs (+0)
Cormier & Magnan 1999 CA Regulatory environment (+) Size (+)
Industry (+)
Financial performance (+)
Information costs (+)
Cowen et al. 1987 US Size (+)
Industry (+)
Existence of a CSR committee (+)
Davis-Walling & Batterman 1997 US Industry (+)
Esrock & Leichty 1998 US Size (+)
Industry (+)
Ranking within industry (0)
Continues
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Table 1. Continued

Freedman & Jaggi 1988 US Financial performance (0)

Fry & Hock 1976 US Financial performance (+)
Industry (+)
Gelb & Strawser 2001 US Social performance (+)
Holder-Webb et al. 2009 US Size (+ 0 )
Industry (+)
Hughes et al. 2001 US Environmental performance ( )
Ingram 1978 US Financial performance as
Ingram & Frazier 1980 US Environmental performance (+)
Ingram & Frazier 1983 US Financial performance ( )
Lober et al. 1997 US Industry (+)
Morhardt 2010 US Size (+)
Industry (+)
Moskowitz 1972 US Financial performance as
Neu et al. 1998 CA Shareholder concerns (+) Size (+)
Creditor concerns (0)
Regulators (+)
Environmentalists (+)
Media ( )
Parket & Eilbrit 1975 US Financial performance (+)
Patten 1991 US Public pressure (+) measured by Size (+)
proxies size and industry Industry (+)
Patten 1992 US Size (+)
Patten 2002 US Size (+)
Preston 1978 US Financial performance (+)
Roberts 1992b US Industry (+)
Systemic risk (0)
Active citizenship/philanthropy (+)
Rockness 1985 US Environmental performance (0)
Spicer 1978 US Size (+)
Financial performance as
Shane & Spicer 1983 US Financial performance as
Stanwick & Stanwick 1998a US Size (+)
Stanwick & Stanwick 1998b US Size ( )
Environmental performance (0)
Stanny & Ely 2008 US Size (+)
Industry (0)
Dependence on capital markets (+)
Continues
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M.S. Fifka
Table 1. Continued

Age of assets (0)

Vance 1975 US Financial performance ( )
Wiseman 1982 US Environmental performance ( )
Zghal & Ahmed 1990 CA Industry (+)
AUSTRALIA (AU) and NEW ZEALAND (NZ)
Brown & Deegan 1998 AU Media coverage (+)
Deegan & Gordon 1996 AU Environmental concern Size (+)
measured by membership in Industry (+)
environmental groups (+)
Deegan & Rankin 1996 AU Desire to alter public perception
because of EPA prosecution (+)
Deegan & Rankin 1999 AU Reader expectations (+) Industry (+)
Gibson & ODonovan 2007 AU Industry (+)
Guthrie & Parker 1989 AU External pressure (+)
Hackston & Milne 1996 NZ Size (+)
Industry (+)
Overseas listing (+)
Hossain et al. 1995 NZ Size (+), leverage (+)
Assets-in-place (0)
Type of auditor (0)
Foreign listing status (+)
McMurtrie 2005 AU Readership expectations (+) Industry (0)
Corporate culture (+)
ODonovan 2002 AU Managers perceptions of potential
threat scenarios (+)
Tilt 1994 AU Pressure groups (+)
Tilt 2001 AU Existence of a corporate
environmental policy (0)
Trotman & Bradley 1981 AU Social pressure as perceived Size (+)
by the company (+)
Country (+)* Management decision horizon (+)
Wilmshurst & Frost 2000 AU Managerial perceptions of issue
salience (+)
NORTH-WESTERN EUROPE: Denmark (DK), Finland (FI), France (FR), Germany (DE), Ireland (IE), The Netherlands (NL), Norway
(NO), United Kingdom (GB), Sweden (SW), Switzerland (CH)
Adams 2002 DE, GB Country (+) Size (+)
Company culture (+)
Adams et al. 1995 GB Equal opportunities performance (+)
Adams et al. 1998 CH, DE, FR, Country (+) Size (+)
GB, NL, SW Industry (+)
Adams & Harte 1998 GB Country (+) (longitudinal) Management attitudes (+)
Adams & Kuasirikun 2000 DE, GB Country (+)
Bartolomeo et al. 2000 DE, IT, GB, NL, Country (+)
Brammer & Pavelin 2004 GB Size (+)
Industry (+)
Media visibility (+)
Continues
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Table 1. Continued

Social performance (+)

Brammer & Pavelin 2008 GB Media exposure (0) Size (+)
Industry (+)
Birkin & Jorgensen 1994 DK, GB Country (+)
Campbell 2000 GB Managerial attitudes (+)
Campbell 2003 GB Exposure to criticism (+) Industry (+)
Campbell et al. 2003 GB Public expectations (0) Industry (+)
Cerin 2002 SW Size (+)
Industry (+)
Clarke & Gibson-Sweet 1999 GB Size (+)
Industry (+)
Clausen et al. 2005 DE Industry (+)
Collison et al. 2003 GB Managerial attitudes (+)
Cormier & Magnan 2003 FR Size (+)
Industry (+)
Dependence on capital markets (+)
Cormier et al. 2005 DE Public pressure (+) Size (+)
Industry (+)
Age of assets (+)
Risk (+)
Ownership (+)
Routine (+)
Gray 1995a/b GB Political development (+) Size (+ 0)
Haddock 2005 GB Consumer focus (+) Size (+)
Media allegations (+) Public listing (+)
Brand name (+)
Haddock-Fraser & Fraser 2007 GB Closeness to market (+)
Halme & Huse 1997 FI, NO, SW, ES Country (+) Size (0)
Industry (+)
Hedberg & von Malmborg 2003 SW Industry (+)
Knox et al. 2006 GB Size (+)
Industry (+)
Martin & Hedley 2008 GB Size (+)
Industry(+)
Management attitudes (+)
Cost of data collection ( )
Moore 2001 GB Size (+)
Financial performance (+/ )
Age (+)
Social performance (+)
Murray et al. 2006 GB Stock price (0)
Niskala & Pretes, 1995 1995 FI Country (+)* Industry (+)
Niskanen & Nieminen 2001 FI Industry (+)
ODwyer 2002 IE Industry (+)
Continues
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M.S. Fifka
Table 1. Continued

Managerial attitudes (+)

ODwyer 2003 IE Size (+)
Industry (+)
ODwyer & Gray 1998 IE Size (+)
Industry (+)
Quaak et al. 2007 NL Size (+)
Social performance (0)
Roberts 1991 CH, DE, FR, Country (+)
NL, SWE
Robertson & Nicholson 1996 GB Industry (+)
Schadewitz & Niskala 2010 FI Market value (+) as dependent variable
Stiller & Daub 2007 CH Industry (+)
Stray & Ballantine 2000 GB Size (+)
Industry (+)
Tagesson et al. 2009 SW Size (+)
Industry (+)
Ownership (private vs. Government
owned) (+)
Vormedal & Ruud 2009 NO Societal, political, and Size (0)
regulatory characteristics (+) Industry (+)
Internationalization (+)
Vuontisjrvi 2006 FI Size (+)
SOUTHERN EUROPE: Italy (IT), Portugal (PT), Spain (ES)
Da Silva Monteiro & 2010 PT Size (+)
Aibar-Guzman Industry (0)
Stock market listing (+)
Foreign parent company (0)
Environmental certication (0)
Gallego 2006 ES Industry (+)
Inchausti 1997 ES Legislation (+) Size (+)
Industry (0)
Stock exchange cross listing (+)
Auditing (+)
Llena et al. 2007 ES Industry (regulated or not) (0)
Industry (environmental, critical) (+)
Stock market listing (0)
Luna Sotorrio & 2010 ES Size (+)
Fernandez Sanchez Reputation (+)
Moneva & Llena 2000 ES Industry (regulated or not) (0)
Stock market listing (0)
Foreign parent company (+)
Noci 2000 IT Industry (+)
Level of eco-efciency (+)
Method of collecting information (+)
Continues
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Table 1. Continued

Prado-Lorenzo et al. 2009 ES Stakeholder influence (+)Size (+)

Strategic posture (+)
Prencipe 2004 IT Size (0)
Ownership dispersion (0)
Listing age (+)
Secci 2006 IT Form of ownership (+)
EASTERN EUROPE: Bulgaria (BU), Czech Republic (CZ), Hungary (HU), Poland (PL), Slovakia (SK), Slovenia (SI)
Alin et al. 2011 BU, HU Country (+)
Steuer & Konrad 2009 CZ, HU, PL, Socio-political systems (+)
SK, SI
ASIA MIDDLE EAST: Jordan (JO), Qatar (QA), Saudi Arabia (SA)
Abu-Baker & Naser 2000 JO Industry (+)
Alsead 2006 SA Size (+)
Industry (0)
Firm age (0)
Debt ratio (0)
Dispersion of ownership (0),
auditing (0)
Naser et al. 2006 QA Size (+)
Business risk (+)
Form of ownership (0)
Dividend payout (0)
ASIA SOUTH ASIA: Bangladesh (BD), India (IN)
Belal 2000 BD Internationalization (+)
Belal & Owen 2007 BD External pressures (+) Managerial attitudes (+)
Gautam & Singh 2010 IN Size (+)
Imam 2000 BD Size (+)
Rashid & Lodh 2008 BD Corporate governance systems (+)
Ownership concentration (+ 0)
Sahay 2004 IN Industry (+)
Singh & Ahuja 1983 IN Industry (+)
Sobhani et al. 2009 BD Industry (+)
ASIA EAST ASIA: China (CN), Hong Kong (HK), Japan (JP), South Korea (KR)
Chan & Welford 2005 CN/HK Exposure to environmentally Industry (+)
related risks (0)
Choi 1999 KR Size (+)
Industry (+)
Auditing (+)
Sales growth rate (+)
Gao et al. 2005 HK Size (+)
Industry (+)
Jaggi & Zhao 1996 HK Managerial attitudes (0)
Continues
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M.S. Fifka
Table 1. Continued

Kolk et al. 2010 CN Nationality (+)

Liu & Anbumozhi 2009 CN Governmental pressure (+) Size (+)
Pressure from other Financial performance (+)
stakeholders (0) Geographic location within the
country (+)
Lynn 1992 HK Country (+)* Industry (+)

Foreign ownership (+)
Nakamura et al. 2001 JP Managerial attitudes (+)
Stanwick & Stanwick 2006 JP Social and political Industry (+)
environment (+)
Yamagami & Kokubu 1991 JP Country (+) Industry (+)
Zeng et al. 2010 CN Size (+)
Industry (+)
Marketization ( )
Zhongfu et al. 2011 CN Financial performance as
ASIA SOUTH EAST ASIA: Indonesia (ID), Malaysia (MY), Philippines (PH), Singapore (SG), Thailand (TH)
Ahmad et al. 2003 MY Size (0)
Industry (0)
Tax burden (0)
Leverage ( )
Auditor (+)
Andrew et al. 1989 MY, SG Country (+) Size (+)
1
Chapple & Moon 2005 ID, IN, KR, MY, Country (+) Internationalization (+)
PH,
SG, TH Globalization (+)
Foo & Tan 1988 MY, SG Country (+)
Gunawan 2007 ID Stakeholder influence (0+) Size (0 +)
Industry (+)
Company age (0)
Haniffa & Cooke 2005 MY Size (+)
Industry (+)
Multiple listing (+)
Governance structures (+)
Ismail 2005 MY Financial performance (0)
Company growth (0)
Leverage (+)
Kuasirikun 2005 TH Accountants attitudes (+)
Kuasirikun & Sherer 2004 TH Country (+)
Perry & Sheng 1999 SG Country (+)
Ratanajongkol et al. 2006 TH Stakeholder expectations Size (0)
related to industry type (+) Industry (+)
Saleh 2006 MY Industry (+)
Continues
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Table 1. Continued

Saleh et al. 2010 MY Institutional ownership (+)

Teoh & Thong 1984 MY Size (+)
Nationality of ownership (+)
Tsang 1998 SG Industry (+)
Yusoff et al. 2006 MY Stakeholder concerns (+) Environmental concern of
management (+)
Regulatory compliance (+)
Shareholder value (+)
Operational improvements (+)
AFRICA: Egypt (EG), Ghana(GH), South Africa (ZA)
Dawkins & Ngunjiri 2008 ZA Country (+)
De Villiers 1999 ZA Stakeholder pressure (+) Managerial attitudes (+)
Competitive pressure (+)
De Villiers 2003 ZA Absence of legal requirements ( ) Unavailability of data ( )
No motivation for disclosure ( )
De Villiers and Barnard 2000 ZA Size (+)
Industry (+)
Fear of liability ( )
De Villiers and van Staden 2006 ZA Non-existence of the need to Industry (+)
legitimize own actions ( )
Mitchell and Hill 2009 ZA Absence of legal requirements Unavailability of data ( )
( ) Cost of obtaining data ( )
No motivation for disclosure ( )
Rahaman 2000 GH Pressure from international Desire to obtain intl. Listing (+)
lenders (+)
Governmental pressure (+) Management attitudes (+)
Rizk et al. 2008 EG Industry (+)
Ownership structure (+)
LATIN AMERICA: Mexico (ME)
Araya 2006 Latin America Country (+) Industry (+)
overall International sales orientation (+)
Logsdon et al. 2006 ME Social and political history and
current context (+)
Meyskens and Paul 2010 ME Time when reporting was
adopted (+)
Paul et al. 2006 ME Stakeholders (+)
TRANSCONTINENTAL (For studies which contain more than 10 countries, the countries were not identied separately)
Baskin 2006 21 countries, all Varying factors across Varying factors across countries
emerging countries and regions and regions
markets
Chen & Bouvain 2009 AU, DE, GB, US Country (+) Size (+)
Membership in the global
compact (+)
Cormier et al. 2004 CA, DE, FR Country (+) Size (+)
Media exposure (+) Managerial attitudes (+)
Age of fixed assets (0)
Gray et al. 1990 GB, US Country (+) Managerial perceptions (+)
Continues
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Table 1. Continued

Cost constraints ( )
Guthrie & Parker 1990 AU, US, UK Regulation (+)
Country (+)
Hartman et al. 2007 EU, US Region (+)
Holland and Boon Foo 2003 UK, US Country (+)
Kolk 2001 12 countries Country (+) Industry (+)
Kolk 2003 CH, DE, FR, Country (+) Industry (+)
GB, IT, JP,
KR, NL, US,
Kolk 2008 Four regions Country (+)
Region (+)
Kolk and Perego 2010 20 countries Country (+) Industry (+)
Lober et al. 1997 US, CA, Europe Industry (+)
Maignan & Ralston 2002 FR, GB, NL, US Country (+) Industry (0)
Meek et al. 2005 DE, FR, GB, NL, Country (+) Size (+)
US Industry (+)
International listing (+)
Leverage (0)
Multi-nationality (0+)
Morhardt et al. 2002 International Industry (+)
Morhardt 2010 International Size (0 +)
Industry (+)
Newson & Deegan 2002 AU, SG, KR Country (+) Industry (+)
Smith et al. 2005 DK, NO, US Country (+) Stakeholder orientation (+)
Tsang et al. 2009 Global Region (+) Industry (+)
Welford 2004 12 countries Country (+)
Region (+)
Williams & Ho Wern Pei 1999 AU, SG, MY, HK Country (+)
Table 1. Overview of studies examined

Note that + indicates that a positive and signicant correlation or proof for the inuence of the respective factor was found,
indicates a negative and signicant correlation or proof, and 0 no correlation or proof. Moreover, the variable country though
it could also be seen as a company characteristic was regarded as an external determinant, because it determines the socio-
economic business environment.
*ISO codes are used for country abbreviations.
1
For statistical purposes, the study by Chapple & Moon has been counted to studies on South East Asia because the clear majority
of countries examined belongs to that region.
responsibility reporting (e.g. Bowman and Haire, 1976; Beresford and Feldman, 1976; Patten, 1992; Patten, 2002;
Esrock and Leichty, 1998).
Another determinant that has been given remarkable attention is social and environmental performance. Again,
mostly a positive correlation was found, meaning that rms which have a good social or environmental performance
tend to report more than others (Ingram and Frazier, 1980; Belkaoui and Karpik, 1989; Gelb and Strawser, 2001;
Clarkson et al., 2008). Nevertheless, some studies have shown no (Rockness, 1985; Stanwick & Stanwick, 1998b)
or even a negative correlation (Wiseman, 1982; Hughes et al., 2001). Other internal determinants which have occa-
sionally been examined are systematic risk, the age of assets and the inuence of the existence of a corporate social
responsibility (CSR) committee.
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External determinants, however, have hardly been examined at all in an American context (see Table 1). Belkaoui
and Karpik (1989) as well as Patten (1991) used size and industry as proxies to measure the political visibility of and
public pressure on corporations, and found a positive relationship. Abbott and Monsen (1979) also found a
reporting increase due to public pressure, and Alciatore et al. (2004) reached the same conclusion for regulatory
measures. Finally, Buhr and Freedman (2001), in a comparative study on Canadian and American businesses,
concluded that history, geography, the political and legal system and the business climate also seem to inuence
reporting, but conceded that their analyses has a component of speculation since a causal relationship between
any of these factors and the disclosure provided (p. 311) could not be implied.
Canada
Canada has also been the origin of a large number of empirical studies, primarily on environmental reporting. This
can largely be attributed to the signicance of environmental issues to Canadian businesses (Henriques and
Sadorsky, 1996, p. 386), which in turn has led to extensive environmental disclosure, especially in the pulp and
forestry industry, and respective empirical studies (Di Norcia et al., 1993; Sinclair and Walton, 2003). This industry
together with oil and gas, mineral extraction and chemicals was also examined by Neu et al. (1998).
As in the USA, the examination of potential internal determinants has featured prominently in Canadian research,
but the focus has been placed on structural instead of nancial variables. In that vein, the correlation between size and
responsibility reporting was investigated by Neu et al. (1998), Cormier and Magnan (1999) and Cormier and Gordon
(2001), who all found that disclosure became more extensive with increasing company size. A positive correlation
between industry and reporting was shown by Zghal and Ahmed (1990) and Cormier and Magnan (2003). Bewley
and Li (2000) also found that rms with a higher pollution propensity tended to provide more information.
Aside from these classical variables, Cormier and varying co-authors focused on the inuence of information
costs and benets. The results reached were mixed, however. Cormier and Magnan (2003) found that there was a
positive correlation between the cost of obtaining information and benets, while Cormier and Gordon (2001) con-
cluded that environmental disclosures seem to be more closely related to information costs and benets than do
social disclosures (p. 615). The latter study also took an innovative approach by examining the inuence of the form
of ownership, and demonstrated that publicly owned rms disclosed more social and environmental information
than did the privately owned company (p. 616).
As mentioned, Canadian researchers have given only a little attention to the relation between nancial performance
and reporting. It was only investigated by Cormier and Magnan (2003). Instead, considerable attention has been given
to external determinants of reporting. In this context, Neu et al. (1998) examined the inuence of specic stake-
holder groups on reporting. They found that pressure from shareholders, regulators and environmentalists led to
more reporting, whereas creditors had no inuence, and pressure from the media even resulted in less responsibil-
ity reporting. Bewley and Li (2000), however, demonstrated in their study that rms with more media exposure
tended to provide more environmental information. Cormier and Magnan (2003) determined a positive correlation
between regulatory pressure and reporting. Buhr and Freedman (2001) also found that the political and legal system
were determinants of reporting.
Australia and New Zealand

In Australia, the examination of internal determinants, such as size or industry, has received relatively little
attention, although Trotman and Bradley (1981) took that approach in one of the earliest empirical studies on
responsibility reporting. They examined the inuence of company characteristics (size, systematic risk measured
by betas, social constraints and management decision horizon), all of which turned out to have an impact on
voluntary disclosure. With regard to size, a positive correlation with reporting was also demonstrated by Deegan
and Gordon (1996). The latter, moreover, found industry to be a determinant of reporting, and so did Deegan
and Rankin (1999) as well as Gibson and ODonovan (2007). McMurtrie (2005), however, in a small study on
two companies, found no impact of industry.
External factors, on the contrary, have often been subject to investigation in the Australian context. In 1989,
Guthrie and Parker did a longitudinal study on BHP Billiton, which found that external events relating to company
history led to changes in reporting. In the 1990s, Deegan with varying co-authors published a great variety of
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M.S. Fifka
studies, mostly focusing on the perception of environmental reports among different audiences. Deegan and
Gordon (1996) found that increasing environmental concern by the public over the years, measured by environmen-
tal group membership, led to an increase in environmental reporting. In the same year, Deegan and Rankin (1996)
examined the reporting practices of companies which had been prosecuted for violating environmental laws. They
discovered that the managers desire to alter their companies bruised images also led to an increase in reporting. In
the same vein, Wilmshurst and Frost (2000) examined if relationships existed between actual reporting practices
and ratings of importance assigned to various factors [of reporting] (p. 10) by executives. Their results indicate
some signicant correlations between the perceived importance of a number of factors and environmental report-
ing practices (p. 10). Finally, a study by ODonovan (2002) also demonstrated that managerial perceptions have an
impact on voluntary disclosure. Likewise, Brown and Deegan (1998) as well as Deegan and Rankin (1999) found
that media coverage and reader expectations also correlated positively with reporting. A study by Tilt (1994) indi-
cated that expectations by external groups, environmental groups in this case, may also have an impact on corporate
responsibility reporting. The existence of a written corporate environmental policy statement as an internal determi-
nant did not turn out to have a positively impact on environmental reporting (Tilt, 2001).
Studies from New Zealand have also focused on the environmental dimension of responsibility reporting, but
have placed more emphasis on company-inherent determinants. Hossain et al. (1995) studied voluntary disclosure
by 55 companies listed on the New Zealand Stock Exchange (NZSE) and found size, leverage and additional foreign
listing to positively correlate with reporting. The assets-in-place and the type of auditor, however, were of no signif-
icance. The positive impact of overseas listing was conrmed by a study by Hackston and Milne (1996), who also
found that size and industry were determinants of reporting. Financial performance, on the contrary, had no
inuence.
Europe
Aside from North America and Australia, a signicant number of studies have also originated from Europe, and es-
pecially its northern and western parts. Although most of them have a national focus, some have considered the re-
gion as a whole or dealt with multiple countries.
North-western Europe (Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, United Kingdom, Sweden,
Switzerland)2
Naturally, the aim of studies which took more countries into account was to determine whether national contextual,
and thus external, factors led to differences in responsibility reporting. This type of study had already been con-
ducted by Roberts in 1991. She examined environmental disclosure in the annual reports of 110 companies from
north-western Europe Switzerland, Denmark, France, The Netherlands, and Sweden and found some evidence
that country-specic patterns of disclosure exist (p. 69). Adams et al. (1998) and Bartolomeo et al. (2000) also found
indications for a variation of reporting in European countries. Perrini (2005), on the contrary, examined responsi-
bility reporting by European companies without differentiating between their countries of origin because he as-
sumed a strong uniformity in how they report their CSR activities (p. 612). A small-scale two-country study was
done by Birkin and Jorgensen (1994), who looked at the environmental reporting of six businesses from the UK
and Denmark and detected national differences in disclosure, but did not attribute these to specic causes. Small
exploratory studies on two north-western European countries were also conducted by Adams and Kuasirikun
(2000) and Adams (2002), who looked at large multinational companies in the chemical and pharmaceutical sec-
tors of the UK and Germany, and concluded that reporting depended on the country of origin.
Internal determinants, like size or industry, were hardly taken into account in comparative studies on European
companies, although they should at least have been considered as control variables. Only Adams (2002) explicitly set
out to identify internal organizational factors inuencing corporate social and ethical reporting (p. 223) and dem-
onstrated that corporate size and corporate culture were important variables. Adams et al. (1998) also found that in-
dustry had an impact on reporting practices.
2
Countries in brackets indicate the ones for which studies will be discussed. The regions were dened according to the statistical regions as de-
termined by the UN.
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Regarding studies dealing with one country only, the largest body of literature has been produced in the UK, where the
investigation of internal variables has clearly been dominant. However, not only were structural determinants considered,
signicant attention has also been paid to social performance. Adams et al. (1995), who focused on equal opportunities
disclosure, as well as Brammer and Pavelin (2004), who documented voluntary reporting in general, found a positive
correlation between social performance and reporting, and so did Moore (2001) in an industry-specic study on UK
supermarkets. His results and the ones of a follow-up study (Moore and Robson, 2002) also indicate that size and com-
pany age inuenced reporting. The relation between nancial performance and responsibility reporting, however,
has been of hardly any interest to British scholars, especially in comparison to their counterparts from the USA.
Murray et al. (2006), in their study on the 100 largest companies in the UK, found that nancially more successful
companies tended to report more, but that there was no relation between share returns and disclosure.
Like in other countries, size and industry were also given considerable attention by researchers from the UK and
were found to have an impact on reporting practices (Robertson and Nicholson, 1996; Clarke and Gibson-Sweet,
1999; Stray and Ballantine, 2000; Campbell, 2003; Campbell et al. 2003; Haddock, 2005; Brammer and Pavelin,
2008). A rather unique market-related approach was pursued by Haddock-Fraser and Fraser (2008). They sampled
166 FTSE companies in order to determine if close-to-market companies were more likely to provide environmental
disclosure than business-to-business companies, which turned out to be the case.
Furthermore, it can be said that managerial attitudes as a potential determinant were intensively investigated in
studies in the UK Collison et al. (2003) sent a questionnaire to 200 managers to determine their perception on
stakeholder interests in environmental reporting. They concluded that the attitudes of managers have an impact
on the form and extent of disclosure. Martin and Hadley (2008), in their questionnaire-based study of 151 FTSE
companies, found that skepticism and negative attitudes towards reporting were the prime reason for non-
disclosure, followed by the cost of data collection. Finally, Spence (2009) interviewed 25 managers to investigate
whom they considered to be the primary target groups of reporting, but did not search for the reasons for
differences in reporting practices.
Despite that focus on internal variables, several studies have also examined external variables of very different
kinds. Thus, it can be said that responsibility reporting research has been quite innovative in the UK. Gray et al.
(1995a, 1995b) published a longitudinal study on social and environmental reporting covering a period of 13 years.
The results demonstrated that, apart from size, political development over the years brought about changes in en-
vironmental reporting. Campbell (2003) showed that exposure to criticism had an inuence on reporting, whereas
public expectations did not (Campbell et al. 2003). Haddock (2005) examined responsibility reporting by the UK
food sector and found that consumer focus and media allegations as external factors all affected provision of envi-
ronmental information by U.K. food companies (p. 792). However, a study by Brammer and Pavelin (2008), who
investigated patterns in the quality of voluntary environmental disclosures (p. 120) did not conrm that media ex-
posure had an impact.
With regard to Ireland, substantial research on responsibility reporting has been conducted by ODwyer, who
with varying co-authors focused on internal determinants. ODwyer and Gray (1998) published a longitudinal
study on voluntary reporting of the 50 largest listed Irish companies. They found a positive correlation between
reporting and size as well as industry, although for the latter the correlation was not observable for all years. These
results were also found in a study (ODwyer, 2003) of all listed Irish companies (n = 83), although they were not sig-
nicant for some forms of disclosure. Aside from industry and size, attitudes just like in research on the UK
were also examined in the Irish context. ODwyer (2002) interviewed 27 senior executives to determine the reasons
for reporting and non-reporting, and found that managerial attitudes had an impact on responsibility reporting prac-
tices. Aside from managers, ODwyer et al. (2005) also investigated stakeholder perceptions of responsibility report-
ing, but did not examine if they had an impact on the disclosure itself.
There are only a small number of studies concerning the Benelux countries. As early as 1981, Schreuder exam-
ined what content employees in the Netherlands expected to nd in social reports. He found that expectations dif-
fered with employees positions or functions, but did not examine if these were actually considered when designing
the reports. Quaak et al. (2007) did an in-depth study on the sustainability reporting of seven Dutch breweries of
different sizes. They found that size was positively correlated with reporting, but social performance was not. Aside
from one study, which takes a very general approach and does not deal with determinants of reporting in specic
(Lefebvre et al., 1995), there are no studies on Belgium and Luxemburg known to the author.
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The situation for France is not signicantly better, although in 2003 Cormier and Magnan published a study on
50 French companies that examined a large number of internal determinants of reporting. The authors found that
size, industry and nancial performance as well as the dependence on capital markets were all positively correlated
with disclosure. Delbard (2008) analyzed the specic case of the French legislation on compulsory sustainability
reporting for publicly-listed companies (p. 397), but took a more qualitative approach with only little empirical
backup. Aside from these, French businesses have also been part of multiple-country studies (Cormier et al.,
2004; Saida, 2009).
The same holds true for Germany, although the country was at the forefront of empirical research on social
reporting in the 1970s (Budaeus, 1977; Dierkes, 1979; Schreuder, 1979; Ullmann, 1979; Brockhoff, 1979). How-
ever, that early research focused mostly on the evaluation of social reports with regard to content. The Institute
for Ecological Economy Research, which was founded in 1985, began to deal with environmental reporting in the
mid-1990s. This resulted in some publications in English (Clausen, 1995; Clausen and Fichter, 1998), which were
mostly dedicated to analyzing the quality of reporting. In 1994, the institute also began to publish a ranking for en-
vironmental reports, which was used as a basis for other publications (e.g. Gebauer and Hoffmann, 2009). It is
striking that the only study which explicitly examined determinants of reporting in Germany was conducted by
non-German authors. Cormier et al. (2005) examined voluntary disclosures of 50 listed companies to answer the
question of whether it was economic incentives, public pressures or institutional conditions (p. 165), which deter-
mined the quality of reports. They found that size, industry, the age of assets, risk, the form of ownership and rou-
tine all inuenced environmental reporting, and so did public pressure as an external factor, while nancial
performance had no impact.
Concerning Switzerland, determinants of reporting have hardly been subject to empirical research. In 2006,
Daub and Karlsson published the rst benchmark survey (p. 557) on sustainability reporting for the top 100 Swiss
companies. One year later, it was expanded signicantly, now assessing the corporate reporting practice in the 250
largest Swiss companies, over a time frame of three years (Stiller and Daub, 2007, p. 474). Both studies showed that
industry had an impact on reporting.
While the state of empirical research on environmental reporting is not quite satisfactory in western Europe, with
the exception of the UK, there is a large body of literature from northern Europe, reecting the environmental con-
sciousness of Scandinavians. There are several studies which have compared environmental reporting in two or
more Scandinavian countries. Halme and Huse (1997) tested the impact of governance, industry and country vari-
ables on environmental reporting for the 120 largest Swedish, Finnish and Norwegian companies, using the 20 larg-
est Spanish companies as a control variable. They found that size and country were variables that inuenced
reporting, while size which is a rather unusual result did not. Nyquist (2003) compared the standards for man-
datory environmental disclosure in Denmark, Norway and Sweden and found substantial differences in the legal
framework for reporting, but did not conduct an empirical study.
Already in 1977, Grjer and Stark had published a case study on social accounting and reporting in Sweden. Later
studies focused strongly on internal variables. Cerin (2002) found that size, measured by market capitalization,
and industry correlated with reporting. One year later, Hedberg and von Malmborg (2003) analyzed how and
why Swedish companies undertook sustainability reporting according to the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI). Their
study, although only vaguely, indicates that there are industry-related differences with regard to voluntary disclo-
sure. Likewise, the ndings by Tagesson et al. (2009) support the positive correlation of size and protability with
the content of social disclosure information and also demonstrate that [s]tate-owned corporations disclose more so-
cial information on their websites than privately owned corporations do (p. 352). Finally, industry turned out to be a
determinant.
Finland has also brought forward a considerable number of studies, which mostly investigated size and/or industry
as determinants and found them to inuence reporting (Niskala and Pretes, 1995; Niskanen and Nieminen, 2001;
Vuontisjrvi, 2006). A different approach was taken by Schadewitz and Niskala (2010), who explored the relation-
ship between responsibility reporting and rm value for all companies listed on the Helsinki Stock Exchange. Their
model supported the conclusion that communication via GRI responsibility reporting is an important explanatory
factor for a rms market value (p. 96). Thus, market capitalization was found to increase with the extent of reporting.
The number of studies for Denmark and Norway is smaller. In 1996, Rikhardsson gave a short overview of en-
vironmental reporting practices by Danish companies, but did not examine any determinants of disclosure. The
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same approach was taken by Holgaard and Jrgensen (2005), who provided a qualitative discussion of mandatory
environmental reporting in Denmark. Only Vormedal and Ruud (2009) did a large empirical study and explored
the inuence of societal, political and regulatory characteristics and developments on the quality of corporate sus-
tainability disclosures (p. 207), but did not nd that these external factors made an impact. With regard to internal
determinants, reporting varied with industries and to some extent also with the degree of internationalization. Size,
unlike in most studies, did not matter.
Southern Europe (Spain, Portugal, Italy)

Surprisingly, a considerable number of studies have originated from southern Europe, although environmentalism
and social systems are traditionally weak in the respective countries. This absence of strong external forces has led
researchers to examine primarily internal determinants of reporting. It is remarkable that for Spain, Portugal as well
as Italy the number of studies which did not nd an inuence of industry membership and nancial performance
on reporting is unusually high. In the case of Spain, no correlation between industry and disclosure was determined
by Inchausti (1997) and Moneva and Llena (2000). A later study by Llena et al. (2007) only found a limited impact of
industry. A denite impact in turn was observed by Gallego (2006) and Prado-Lorenzo et al. (2009). With regard to
the correlation between reporting and stock market listing, the results are also mixed (Inchausti, 1997; Moneva and
Llena, 2000). The likeliness of disclosure increasing with size, however, was observed by most studies (Inchausti,
1997; Prado-Lorenzo et al., 2009; Luna Sotorro and Fernndez Snchez, 2010). Other internal variables which were
found to be inuential were the nationality of the parent company (Moneva and Llena, 2000), the extent of auditing
(Inchausti, 1997), reputation (Luna Sotorro and Fernndez Snchez, 2010) and strategic posture (Prado-Lorenzo
et al., 2009). As mentioned above, an impact of nancial performance could not be found in the case of Spanish
rms (Inchausti, 1997; Prado-Lorenzo et al., 2009).
The same can be said for rms in Italy, where nancial performance also did not have an effect on disclosure
(Prencipe, 2004). The results with regard to size are mixed (Noci, 2000; Prencipe, 2004), but industry and the level
of eco-efciency (Noci, 2000) as well as listing age (Prencipe, 2004) and the form of ownership (Secchi, 2006) were
found to have an impact. In general, the number of studies on reporting in Italy is low, although Azzone et al.
(1996a; 1997) had already conducted qualitative studies that partly included Italian rms at a relatively early stage.
A rst study on environmental reporting in Portugal was conducted by Ferreira (2004), which, however, was
qualitative in nature and asked if and how the companies surveyed presented environmental information. In con-
trast, Da Silva Monteiro and Aibar-Guzmn (2010) examined a wide variety of internal variables in their study of
109 large rms operating in Portugal. Only size and stock market listing turned out to be signicant factors,
whereas industry, nancial performance, the existence of a foreign parent company and having obtained environ-
mental certication through the ISO did not.
Eastern Europe
With regard to eastern Europe, responsibility reporting can at best be considered in its infancy. Initiatives to foster
and study this form of disclosure have only just begun (cf. Cherp, 2005). This decit can largely be attributed to the
communist past. In that regard, the United Nations Development Programme, which conducted a rst qualitative
study of the status quo of CSR in the new EU member countries, has remarked that [d]ue to the socialist heritage,
there is a general perception, both in the business community and the public at large, that social responsibility and
social caring is the primary role of government. Most companies consider their responsibility to operate in compli-
ance with the legal and regulatory environment of the given country (pp. 2324). In 2009, Steurer and Konrad pub-
lished a study which considered central and eastern Europe as a whole and compared it with western Europe. The
authors found that the understanding of CSR and related reporting depended heavily on the socio-political context,
but did not empirically test any specic variables. Baskin (2006), in a large-scale study on emerging markets, found
that foreign ownership and competitive advantage as internal variables as well as the inuence of corporate gover-
nance codes and EU accession as external variables were key drivers for reported corporate responsibility in eastern
Europe. Recently, Alin et al. (2011) found country-related differences for reporting in Hungary and Romania, which
they explained by factors such as the existence of well implemented and applied environmental legislation and
economic progress (p. 127).
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Asia
The number of studies on corporate responsibility reporting in Asia is substantial, especially when considering that
many of the respective countries can be considered emerging or even developing. With regard to the nature of the
studies, most have applied content analysis of annual reports and focused on internal determinants of reporting.
Like other continents, Asia as a region has also been part of larger transcontinental studies (Williams, 1999;
Newson and Deegan, 2002; Welford, 2004) or studies that have exclusively focused on several countries from dif-
ferent Asian regions. In that vein, Chapple and Moon (2005), for example, investigated website reporting by 50 com-
panies from seven south-eastern and southern Asian countries. They found that reporting differed substantially
across countries, which was attributed to the national business systems. They also concluded that the degree of in-
ternationalization had an impact on reporting since multinational companies are more likely to adopt CSR than
those operating solely in their home country (p. 415).
Middle East (Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia)
Studies on Middle Eastern countries have strongly focused on internal determinants of reporting. Abu-Baker and Naser
(2000) showed substantial differences in the reporting practices of 143 listed companies from different industries in
Jordan. One year earlier, they had already examined the perceptions that 206 different users from four groups
(accountants, academics, government ofcials and nance managers) had of sustainability reports, but did not in-
vestigate determinants of reporting (Naser and Abu-Baker, 1999). Likewise, Al-Khater and Naser (2003) published
a similar study for Qatar, again examining the perceptions that different stakeholder groups had of responsibility
reporting. Naser et al. (2006) analyzed a variety of determinants of voluntary disclosure for Qatari companies and
found a signicant correlation between reporting and size as well as business risk, measured by leverage and cor-
porate growth. The form of ownership and dividend payout proved to be insignicant. The same approach was taken
by Alsaeed (2006) for 40 companies from Saudi Arabia. He only found a positive and signicant correlation between
reporting and rm size, but not for industry, nancial performance, rm age, debt ratio, the form of ownership and the
extent of auditing. Overall, internal factors proved to be weak determinants of reporting in the Middle East.
South Asia (Bangladesh, India)

A surprisingly large number of studies on environmental reporting have come from Bangladesh, mostly due to the re-
search efforts by Belal, who focused on internal factors. In an early study he showed that disclosure varies with the de-
gree of internationalization of the company (Belal, 2000). A similar study by Imam (2000) indicated that size may be
an important variable since only large companies (based on market capitalisation and turnover) reported social and
environmental matters in their annual reports (p. 139). Belal and Owen (2007), in a study based on interviews with
managers, determined that managerial attitudes as well as external pressure from stakeholders had an impact on
reporting practices. The inuence of ownership structures and corporate governance practices on responsibility
reporting was quantitatively determined by Rashid and Lodh (2008). Sobhani et al. (2009) found industry-related
differences in reporting. Industry-specic studies of a qualitative nature were conducted by Khan et al. (2009),
who looked at reporting by banks in particular, and by Islam and Deegan (2008), who did a one-company case study
on the motives of a Bangladeshi garment exporter for voluntarily disclosing social and environmental information.
Concerning India, the inuence of company characteristics has been the prime target of investigation, too. Al-
ready in one of the earliest studies on non-nancial reporting overall, Singh and Ahuja (1983) found indications
for differences in reporting resulting from industry membership. This nding was supported by Sahay (2004).
Gautam and Singh (2010) compared responsibility reporting on websites and in annual reports of Top 500 Indian
companies, and found differences that could be attributed to size and prot. Chaudhri and Wang (2007) as well as
Chatterjee and Mir (2008) also researched electronic responsibility reporting, but aimed at determining the quality
of the content provided.
East Asia (Hong Kong,3 China, Korea, Japan)

As is the case for other Asian regions, studies on responsibility reporting in east Asia have focused on internal determi-
nants of reporting, although there are notable exceptions (Chan and Welford, 2005; Stanwick and Stanwick, 2006).
3
Due to its special political status and political history, Hong Kong is considered independently in this study.
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Concerning Honk Kong, Lynn (1992) published an early study on social disclosure in annual reports and found
indications for the inuence of industry as well as foreign ownership. Jaggi and Zhao (1996) examined managers
and professional accountants perceptions of environmental disclosure in Hong Kong. They found that managers
were aware of the need to report, but the actual reporting did not reect that perception. Gao et al. (2005) researched
company characteristics as determinants of social and environmental disclosure and found positive correlations be-
tween disclosure and size as well as industry.
Chan and Welford (2005) also used a sample of rms from Hong Kong, but explicitly spoke of China in the title
of their study, reecting the previous political change. Their analysis showed that the information provided was in-
uenced by industry, but not by companies exposure to environmentally related risks. In general, studies on
company disclosures in China are rather young, because until the late 1990s, research also on nancial reporting
was very difcult because of a lack of data sources and the absence of a culture of co-operation between companies
and researchers, as Xiao (1999) remarked. Early studies focused on nancial disclosure (Ding, 2002; Xiao et al.
2004), whereas studies on social and environmental reporting have only been conducted more recently. Liu and
Anbumozhi (2009) used industry as a proxy for examining governmental pressure and found that it had an impact
on responsibility reporting, while the inuence of other stakeholders did not. Moreover, their study showed that
size, nancial performance and geographical location within China inuenced reporting. Likewise, Zeng et al.
(2010) also found a positive correlation between disclosure and industry as well as size. Zhongfu et al. (2011) con-
sidered an inverse relationship and examined whether better nancial performance led to more disclosure, which
turned out to be the case. In an innovative approach, Kolk et al. (2010) examined the websites and reports of eight
national and foreign retail companies operating in China and detected substantial differences in disclosure with re-
gard to the country of origin.
There are relatively few studies dealing with responsibility reporting in Japan, although the country has been part
of several large-scale international studies (e.g. Kolk, 2004, 2005; Jose and Lee, 2007; Kolk, 2008; Kolk and Perego,
2010) and the degree of reporting among large multinationals is high. Kolk (2008) found that 83% of the Japanese
companies among the Fortune Global 250 publish a sustainability report. Moreover, research on responsibility
reporting was conducted at a relatively early stage. As early as 1991, Yamagami and Kokubu had investigated volun-
tary reports of 49 companies and found that disclosure was inuenced by industry as well as the specic
Japanese reporting environment. The relevance of these two variables was conrmed by Stanwick and Stanwick
(2006), who considered environmental disclosure. Nakamura et al. (2001), in a questionnaire-based study, found
that managerial attitudes had an impact on the attempt to obtain environmental certication, including disclosure.
With regard to South Korea, the situation is almost identical. Responsibility reporting there has been part of in-
ternational studies (Baskin, 2006; Kolk, 2008, Kolk and Perego, 2010), but country-specic studies are scarce. Choi
(1998, 1999) examined a wide array of internal determinants and found a positive correlation between disclosure
and size as well as industry, the size of the auditor, and the sales growth rate, but not for nancial performance.
South-east Asia (Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Philippines)

Empirical research on responsibility reporting has reached a considerable level in south-east Asia, especially in
Malaysia and Singapore. It is interesting to note that these two countries were also the subject of two relatively early
comparative studies (Foo and Tan, 1988; Andrew et al., 1989). Both found that country-specic factors inuenced
responsibility reporting. Perry and Singh (2001) later conrmed these differences based on qualitative analysis
and existing data. An even earlier study on Malaysia only was conducted by Teoh and Thong (1984), which like
most other studies from south-east Asia focused on internal determinants. It showed that company size as well
as the nationality of the company had an impact on disclosure. A positive correlation between disclosure and size
was also found by Andrew et al. (1989) and Haniffa and Cooke (2005), while Ahamad et al. (2003) did not detect
any correlation. With regard to industry, the picture is equally mixed, since Haniffa and Cooke (2005) as well as
Saleh et al. (2010) demonstrated an impact, but Ahamad et al. (2003) again did not. The results with regard to lever-
age are fully contradictory, as Ismail and Chandler (2005) detected a positive correlation with disclosure whereas
Ahamad et al. (2003) found a negative one. One of the few studies concerned with external variables was conducted
by Yusoff et al. (2006), who found a positive impact of stakeholder concerns on reporting. Additionally, they deter-
mined environmental concern within the company, regulatory compliance, shareholder value and operational
improvements to positively inuence reporting. A positive inuence that investors had on reporting was also noted
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M.S. Fifka
by Baskin (2006). An innovative approach was taken by Amran and Haniffa (2011). Their study, [u]nlike previous
studies, which have mainly used ex post content analysis of annual reports or other published data to study the re-
lationship between disclosure and possible determinants, [. . .] starts with an interview with the local preparer before
the data is triangulated to determine the signicant possible determinants (p. 141). However, their regression
results did not produce any signicant results. Finally, several studies have attempted to assess the quality of respon-
sibility reporting in Malaysia without examining specic determinants (Foo and Tan, 1988; Othman and Ameer,
2010).
Apart from the comparative studies mentioned in the paragraph above, responsibility reporting in Singapore was
examined by Tsang (1998) and Perry and Sheng (1999). The former found industry to inuence reporting, whereas
the latter demonstrated that country-specic factors were responsible for the low level of environmental disclosure
in Singapore. The factors identied consisted of a lack of environmental awareness, a lack of perceived benets and
a lack of government pressure.
In comparison to Singapore and Malaysia, research on responsibility reporting in Thailand was started relatively
late. In 2004, Kuasirikun and Sherer attempted to explore the social and environmental disclosure aspect of Thai
annual reports, which they found to fall short of their potential to function as enabling communication (p. 630)
because of country-specic factors. One year later, Kuasirikun (2005) examined the attitudes of Thai accounting pro-
fessionals and found them to be skeptical of social and environmental accounting and disclosure. Ratanajongkol
et al. (2006) in turn found industry and industry-related expectations by stakeholders to positively correlate with dis-
closure, while size did not.
For the Philippines, just one study is known to the author. Moreover, it only allows implications for environmen-
tal reporting, since Purba et al. (2009) simply assume that it benets from the introduction of measurement sys-
tems for environmental performance.
Africa (South Africa, Ghana, Egypt, Nigeria, Uganda)

The number of studies on responsibility reporting in Africa is very limited, and it comes as no surprise that most
existing works are related to South Africa, the continents leading economy. de Villiers in particular has done exten-
sive research and has focused on the perception of and attitudes towards disclosure. Other researchers on South
Africa have done so as well, which has led to the rather unique fact that structural determinants of reporting, like
size and industry, have hardly received any attention at the southern tip of Africa. In 1999, de Villiers conducted
a small exploratory study based on six interviews and found that pressures resulting from stakeholders and from
competition led to more extensive disclosure, intertwined with changing attitudes of the responsible managers. Nev-
ertheless, a later study by de Villiers (2003) showed that environmental reporting was weak in South Africa, despite
the positive attitude of managers towards it. The reason for that contradictory observation lay in the absence of legal
requirements, the unavailability of data and a lack of motivation for companies to report. The results of a later study
by Mitchell and Hill (2009) were almost identical. In the same vein, de Villiers and van Staden (2006) demon-
strated that the non-existence of pressure to legitimize a companys actions resulted in less disclosure. Previously,
de Villiers and Barnard (2000) found that fear of being held liable for the information provided also led to a de-
crease in reporting. Finally, Dawkins and Ngunjiri (2008) took a very different approach and compared the report-
ing of 91 large South African companies with that of the Global Fortune 100. They concluded that CSRR [Corporate
Social Responsibility Reporting] in South African companies was signicantly higher than that of the Fortune
Global 100 (p. 286). The result, however, is not in line with the ndings of a KPMG (2008) study of the same year,
which showed that disclosure was on the rise in South Africa but still signicantly behind the average of the largest
companies in other countries.
For other African countries, empirical research on responsibility reporting has been rather sporadic. Rahaman
(2000) did a small exploratory study based on interviews in 12 companies in Ghana. He found that pressure from
international lenders like the IMF and governmental regulation as external factors, and management attitudes and
the desire to obtain listing on international stock markets as internal factors led to more reporting. Disclosure was
found to be most extensive at the Volta River Authority, which was part of a follow-up case study (Rahaman et al.,
2004). Concerning Egypt, determinants of reporting were empirically examined by Rizk et al. (2008). Their study
DOI: 10.1002/bse
of annual reports found that industry as well as ownership structure had an impact on reporting practices. Whaba
(2010) analyzed the adoption of the ISO 14001 by Egyptian rms, but only partly touched on reporting issues.
Furthermore, two very brief studies based on content analysis are available for Uganda (Kisenyi and Gray, 1998)
and Nigeria (Disu and Gray, 1998), which aimed at determining the state of social reporting in general and did
not examine its determinants.
Latin America (Brazil, Mexico)

With regard to non-nancial reporting in Latin America, Araya (2006) appropriately spoke of terra incognita
(p. 25). She conducted a large-scale study on 250 companies from Latin America and found industry and international
sales orientation to positively correlate with disclosure. The country of origin was inuential, too. Baskin (2006) also
detected differences with regard to nationality and found most activity in Brazil, Mexico, Chile, Uruguay, [and]
Argentina (p. 31).
Country-specic studies have mostly been conducted on Mexico, which sometimes has been attributed to the as-
sumption that US rms brought CSR to Mexico, and [. . .] that CSR as practised by Mexican rms simply reects the
CSR patterns and activities of US rms, as Logsdon et al. (2006, p. 51) note. However, their case studies on three
indigenous companies found that their responsibility reporting reected Mexicos social and political history and
current context (p. 51). Likewise, a study by Paul et al. (2006) showed that Mexican companies reacted to stake-
holder interests in their reporting. This study was also used as a basis for a follow-up study by Meyskens and Paul
(2010). It demonstrated that companies which had taken up reporting earlier were more likely to adopt international
standards of disclosure than companies that have only recently started to report. For Brazil, Colares Oliveira et al.
(2009) conducted a small exploratory study to examine to what degree Brazilian companies took into account UN
indicators of social responsibility, but did not investigate inuences on reporting.
Transcontinental Studies
Finally, transcontinental studies meaning studies that have considered countries on more than one continent are
examined. Studies of that nature have a long tradition. Early on, Dierkes and Preston (1977) and Lessem (1977) ex-
amined the differing environments for reporting and the respective practices in the USA and Europe. Also in later
studies, Europe and North America have been at the geographical focus of comparative studies (Gray et al. 1990;
Lober et al., 1997; Maignan and Ralston, 2002; Holland and Foo, 2003; Cormier et al., 2004; Meek et al., 2005;
Smith et al., 2005; Hartman et al., 2007). Several studies have also taken Australia into account (Guthrie and Parker,
1990; Williams and Ho Wern Pei, 1999; Newson and Deegan, 2002; Chen and Bouvain, 2009) or taken a broad
global approach (Kolk et al., 2001; Morhardt et al. 2002; Kolk, 2003; Welford, 2004; Kolk, 2008; Tsang et al.,
2009; Morhardt, 2010; Kolk and Perego, 2010). The global approach has also been taken by the various KPMG stud-
ies, which will not be mentioned here separately. Emerging countries were explicitly examined by Baskin (2006).
Naturally, most of these studies have attempted to investigate whether differences in reporting can be explained
by country or region, and the common nding is that the geographical origin of companies accounts for differences
in reporting. With regard to internal determinants, industry has been examined most frequently, and almost all
studies have either shown that it is a determinant of responsibility reporting or has at least provided strong indica-
tions for that (Lober et al., 1997; Kolk et al., 2001; Morhardt et al. 2002; Kolk, 2003; Meek et al., 2005; Tsang et al.,
2009; Morhardt, 2010; Kolk and Perego, 2010). The only study of a transcontinental nature that did not nd proof
for the inuence of industry is the one by Maignan and Ralston (2002). Size has also been found to be a crucial de-
terminant (Cormier et al., 2004; Meek et al., 2005; Chen and Bouvain, 2009). Only Morhardts (2010) results are
somewhat mixed, since he found an impact of size for smaller companies, but also concluded that when corporate
size reaches a certain threshold, sustainability reporting becomes independent of it (p. 436). The only other variable
that has been researched by more than one transcontinental study is the attitudes of managers and stakeholders,
which were shown to have an impact on disclosure by Gray et al. (1990), Cormier et al. (2004) and Smith et al.
(2005).
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M.S. Fifka
Discussion and Conclusion

The rst research objective (RO1) has been addressed by providing an extensive literature review on responsibility
reporting; the second and third objectives shall now be dealt with, before the limitations of this study and further
research options are laid out.
RO2 was to analyze if the approaches to the empirical investigation of the determinants of responsibility report-
ing differ with regard to countries or regions. Overall, it can be said that some general patterns of empirical research
on responsibility reporting are observable on a global level. First, content analysis has been the most frequently used
research method. Moreover, annual reports have been the prime target of investigation, although in recent years,
stand-alone non-nancial reports and websites have also been examined more often.
Second, and of central concern here, internal determinants rst and foremost those of a structural nature like size,
industry and stock market listing have been investigated far more extensively than external ones. Fifty-seven per cent
of the 185 studies examined here have exclusively considered the impact of internal determinants (see Table 2). Twelve
per cent have investigated solely external determinants, and 31% have analyzed both dimensions. This can be attributed to
two major reasons. Usually, data on variables like size, industry or listing are easy to obtain as the respective information is
provided by the companies themselves or by the media. Moreover, these types of data can be quantied or classied easily.
External determinants, e.g. stakeholder pressure, attitudes and perceptions, are not only harder to quantify, but the respec-
tive data are also more difcult to gather since interviews or surveys have to be conducted.
Nevertheless, aside from these general patterns, there are some signicant differences in the approaches to ex-
amining the determinants of responsibility reporting. The number of studies conducted in western industrialized
countries is much larger than in other parts of the world overall. Nevertheless, the conclusion that research on
responsibility reporting coherently correlates with economic development is hard to draw for two reasons. First,
there are a substantial number of studies on countries with relatively low economic development like Malaysia or
Bangladesh. Second, there are countries like France or Germany, which can be considered highly industrialized
and where responsibility reporting is common, as the studies by Kolk and KPMG have shown, but for which the
number of respective studies of an empirical nature are rather limited.
With regard to the determinants examined, Table 2 shows that researchers in North America have strongly
focused on internal determinants. This number is considerably lower in many regions, where societies are
Region Number Fully or partly Fully or Analysis Analysis Analysis Analysis of Analysis of
of studies based on partly based of only of only of both financial external
overall the analysis on content external internal types of performance stakeholder
of annual analysis (%) variables variables variables (%) positions or
reports (%) (%) (%) (%) perceptions of
disclosure (%)
North America 47 64 87 4 81 15 51 6
Australia and 14 64 79 21 50 29 7 50
New Zealand
North-western Europe 41 41 73 10 59 32 15 15
Southern Europe 10 40 100 0 80 20 40 10
Eastern Europe 2 0 100 100 0 0 0 0
Asia Middle East 3 100 100 0 100 0 75 0
Asia south Asia 8 75 75 0 88 13 13 13
Asia east Asia 12 25 83 0 58 42 25 17
Asia south-east Asia 15 69 88 25 44 31 25 25
Africa 8 38 38 0 25 75 0 50
Latin America 4 25 75 25 25 50 0 25
Transcontinental 21 43 86 29 14 57 5 38
Total 186 52 82 12 58 31 24 20
Table 2. Approaches to the examination of responsibility reporting in regional comparison
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considered to be more collective, e.g. north-western Europe, several parts of Asia, or Latin America (see Hofstede,
2001). There, companies are not only considered to have an economic function but also a social one. Thus,
external stakeholders have a strong interest in the behavior and actions of companies. Consequentially,
researchers have investigated these interests through external variables. Nevertheless, this observation does
not hold for some regions. In southern Europe, the Middle East, and south Asia, where societies are regarded
to be highly collective, internal instead of external variables have absolutely dominated research. On the con-
trary, in Australia and New Zealand, which are considered to be more individualistic because of their Anglo-Saxon cul-
ture, the number of studies that took internal variables into account is relatively low, whereas external variables have
received considerable attention. Such distortions can partly be attributed to the personal interests of researchers who have
contributed a large number of studies on specic countries, e.g. Deegan in Australia or de Villiers in South Africa. This
personal component is of special weight when the overall sample for the specic region is small. In general, the samples
for some of the regions examined eastern Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America are too limited to draw
profound conclusions.
The different approaches to examining determinants of reporting also become visible in Table 3, which contains
ve internal and three external determinants, which have frequently been analyzed. As can be seen, the correlation
between nancial performance and responsibility reporting has been of prime importance to North American
researchers. Fifty-three per cent of all studies conducted there have examined that correlation. In the USA alone,
this number amounts to 59%. Due to the fact that the role of companies in the USA is primarily an economic
one, a traditional shareholder-orientation is still prevalent. In that context, Habisch et al. (2010) remarked appropri-
ately that U.S. rms decide to undertake CSR initiatives in order to achieve their strategic goals, primarily the max-
imization of shareholder value, and they invest in communicating their initiatives in order to persuade their
stakeholders of their CSR (p. 387). In all other regions the number of studies to investigate this correlation is con-
siderably lower. This also goes in line with the observation that stakeholder interests have been of little importance
in North American studies. Only 4% of all studies have investigated the impact of stakeholders on reporting (see
Internal determinants External determinants
Region Size Industry Financial Social and Managerial Country/ Stakeholder Media
performance environmental attitudes region interests pressure
performance
North America 38 89 28 92 53 68 19 44 0 0 4 100 4 100 4 50

Australia and 29 100 36 80 7 0 14 100 14 100 7 100 29 100 14 100
New Zealand
North-western 51 90 61 100 15 67 12 60 12 100 24 100 5 50 5 50
Europe
Southern Europe 50 80 60 50 40 100 20 50 0 0 10 100 10 100 0 0
Eastern Europe 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 100 100 0 0 0 0
Asia - Middle East 67 100 67 50 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Asia south Asia 25 100 38 100 13 100 0 0 13 100 0 0 13 0 0 0
Asia east Asia 33 100 58 100 25 67 0 0 17 50 25 100 8 0 0 0
Asia south-east 38 50 38 83 25 25 0 0 6 100 25 100 25 75 0 0
Asia
Africa 13 100 38 100 0 0 0 0 25 100 13 100 50 50 0 0
Latin America 0 0 25 100 0 0 0 0 0 0 50 100 25 100 0 0
Transcontinental 19 75 48 90 5 100 0 0 10 100 81 100 0 0 5 100
Total 40 87 44 90 25 64 10 56 8 93 23 100 11 70 4 71
Table 3. Determinants of responsibility reporting and their impact

Note: The rst number in each column shows the percentage of studies which have examined the respective variable; the second
number shows the percentage of studies which of those studies that have dealt with the respective variable have found a pos-
itive correlation; e.g. 38% of the studies on North America have examined whether size has an impact on reporting or not; 89% of
the studies that did so have found a positive correlation. All numbers in per cent.
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M.S. Fifka
Tab. 3). In more collective societies in Asian, African or Latin American countries, stakeholder interests have fea-
tured more prominently in research. Again, Australia is an exception to that observation.
Country-related determinants have certainly been given substantial consideration in studies of a transcontinental
nature, but also in studies from developing and emerging countries. When taking a closer look at these studies, it
becomes evident that many of the respective scholars have tried to determine why reporting in these countries is
generally poorly developed.
Many of these studies have concluded that economic development is central to these countries, and social and
environmental aspects are neglected. This is clearly reected by the fact that the impact of social and environmental
performance on reporting has not been considered in developing and emerging markets at all and only been inves-
tigated in highly developed countries (see Table 3).
Managerial attitudes in turn have been of relatively high importance in Africa and Asia, where, as Crane and
Matten (2010) observe, top management is responsible for business, and where the key guidelines for business behavior
are made at managerial discretion (p. 26). Consequentially, this perception is reected by the research approaches.
The impacts of size and industry have been of substantial interest in almost all regions. With very few exceptions,
at least a quarter of all studies on every region have considered these variables. Nevertheless, signicant differences
remain, but these can hardly be explained. It is, for example, difcult to elaborate on why two-thirds of the studies
from the Middle East have taken these structural factors into account while for south-east Asia the number amounts
to only one-third. Overall, these differences can only be attributed to specic research designs. However, it must be
noted that there is a large coherence regarding these two variables within the specic regions. The number of stud-
ies which have considered size is in many cases similar to the number of studies which have examined industry. In
seven out of eleven regions, this difference is never larger than 15%.
The third objective (RO3) takes a meta-analytical approach and examines, based on the studies reviewed, whether
the determinants which were found to inuence responsibility reporting vary across countries or regions. Looking at
the studies in total (Table 3), it can be concluded that there are very strong indications for an impact of size, industry
and managerial attitudes as internal, and especially country-related factors as external determinants. At least 85% of
all the respective studies have found a signicant positive correlation between these variables and responsibility
reporting. Indications for an impact of nancial performance (64% of the studies have found a correlation here),
stakeholder interests (70%) and public or media pressure (71%) are also strong. Only for the relation between nan-
cial performance and reporting are conclusions more difcult since only slightly over half of all studies, 56%, have
found a positive correlation.
Concerning differences in the inuence of specic factors, the following observations can be made. Size and in-
dustry signicantly impact reporting in almost all regions. In south-east Asia with regard to size, and in southern
Europe and the Middle East with regard to industry, only 50% of the studies have determined an impact. These
exceptions, once again, are hard to explain. The same can be said for nancial performance. In most regions where
this variable has been investigated there are strong indications for a positive correlation with reporting. Only in
Australia and south-east Asia this is not the case. Although these regions are geographically close, their business
systems are profoundly different, which makes it difcult to nd plausible explanations for why nancial perfor-
mance does not have an impact on reporting there.
Managerial attitudes is the internal variable which shows the most signicant impact on reporting (Table 3). Aston-
ishingly, the only region where this variable has been examined but found to only have limited impact is east
Asia. This is surprising because, as has been pointed out above, managerial behavior and discretion are central
for business actions there (Crane and Matten, 2010). Nevertheless, this distortion could be attributed to the
small underlying sample size since only two studies dealt with managerial attitudes as a determinant of report-
ing in east Asia. Thus, one deviating result already leads to a change of 50% in the nal overall number.
With regard to the impact of country-related factors, the results are fully coherent across the individual regions
and show a very strong correlation with reporting everywhere. Thus, it can be concluded that the general political
and socio-economic environment has a very strong impact on reporting practices. Concerning the impact of stake-
holders on reporting, the results vary considerably across the regions, but are inconsistent with expectations. In
North America, were stakeholder orientation is traditionally weaker, there is a stronger positive correlation between
stakeholder interests and reporting than in north-western Europe, which usually is assumed to have a stronger
stakeholder orientation. Results for developing and emerging regions also vary considerably. Again, small sample
DOI: 10.1002/bse
sizes in some regions account for differences which are difcult to explain. This also holds true for the impact of
media pressure.
Overall, it can be concluded that sound conclusions on differing research approaches across regions can be made
as well as on the impact of specic variables in total. The examination, however, of whether individual variables have
different impacts in different regions for some of those variables only provides for vague conclusions since the
number of existing studies is not large enough.
This is one of the central limitations of this study, but at the same time it can be seen as a motivation to further
investigate corporate responsibility reporting empirically. Although it is likely that not all existing studies have been
considered in this review, which is the second central limitation, it is safe to say that there are still many rather blank
spots on the world map with regard to empirical research on responsibility reporting. While many of these spots
naturally fall into places where the number of developing or emerging countries is high Africa, large parts of Asia,
eastern Europe and Latin America there are also numerous highly industrialized countries where only a little re-
search on the subject has been conducted. On the contrary, several developing and emerging markets such as
Malaysia, Bangladesh and India have received considerable attention in empirical studies. Thus, there is no clear
dividing line between industrialized countries on one side and developing and emerging ones on the other when
it comes to the existence of quantitative research. Research possibilities therefore are to be found in all parts of
the world.
With regard to methodology and aim, most studies have applied content analysis and examined disclosure
patterns and internal determinants of reporting. Further analysis on external determinants, however, is
needed. To pursue this objective, questionnaires and interviews will be needed. Moreover, aside from examin-
ing which factors have an impact on reporting, the question of what impact reporting actually does have, has
only rarely been asked. Questions on who is to be reached with responsibility reporting, what groups actually
constitute the readership, and how the readers are affected by the reports and how they perceive them, have
mostly been neglected.
Furthermore, research has focused on annual reports, responsibility reports and web pages, whereas media like
labels, booklets and print or television advertisements have hardly been examined. In particular the conveyance of
sustainability or CSR through commercial television advertising would deserve more attention.
Finally, small and medium-sized enterprises have hardly been considered at all in empirical studies. Although
the existing literature shows that their reporting lacks signicantly behind that of large corporations, their efforts
are a worthwhile subject of research, just like the question of what specic reasons account for their seemingly lim-
ited reporting efforts. Overall, it can be concluded that there is signicant potential left for empirical research on
responsibility reporting.
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Business Strategy and the Environment

Bus. Strat. Env. (2011)

Corporate Responsibility Reporting and its

Received 29 November 2010; revised 29 June 2011; accepted 11 July 2011

Existing Reviews of Studies on Responsibility Reporting

Research Objectives and Methodology

Authors Year(s) Countries External determinants analyzed Internal determinants (company

NORTH AMERICA: Canada (CA), United States (US)

Authors Year(s) Countries External determinants analyzed Internal determinants (company

Freedman & Jaggi 1988 US Financial performance (0)

Authors Year(s) Countries External determinants analyzed Internal determinants (company

Age of assets (0)

Authors Year(s) Countries External determinants analyzed Internal determinants (company

Social performance (+)

Authors Year(s) Countries External determinants analyzed Internal determinants (company

Managerial attitudes (+)

Authors Year(s) Countries External determinants analyzed Internal determinants (company

Prado-Lorenzo et al. 2009 ES Stakeholder influence (+)Size (+)

Authors Year(s) Countries External determinants analyzed Internal determinants (company

Kolk et al. 2010 CN Nationality (+)

Lynn 1992 HK Country (+)* Industry (+)

Authors Year(s) Countries External determinants analyzed Internal determinants (company

Saleh et al. 2010 MY Institutional ownership (+)

Authors Year(s) Countries External determinants analyzed Internal determinants (company

Table 1. Overview of studies examined

Australia and New Zealand

Southern Europe (Spain, Portugal, Italy)

South Asia (Bangladesh, India)

East Asia (Hong Kong,3 China, Korea, Japan)

South-east Asia (Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Philippines)

Africa (South Africa, Ghana, Egypt, Nigeria, Uganda)

Latin America (Brazil, Mexico)

Discussion and Conclusion

Table 2. Approaches to the examination of responsibility reporting in regional comparison

Internal determinants External determinants

North America 38 89 28 92 53 68 19 44 0 0 4 100 4 100 4 50

Table 3. Determinants of responsibility reporting and their impact

KPMG. 2005. International Survey of Corporate Responsibility Reporting 2005. Amsterdam.

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