The impact of corporate characteristics on corporate social and environmental disclosure in Jordan

Abstract

Corporate social responsibility disclosure (CSRD) has recently become a prominent feature of the corporate agenda as the business environment now insists on companies showing a strong sense of social responsibility. However, the quantity and the quality of CSRD varies among companies, industries and countries as they are voluntary practised. The current study aims to investigate the determinants of the quality of CSRD and its four dimensions in the context of Jordan, an emerging market country in the Middle East. The primary purpose of this study is to investigate the factors that impact upon the quality of CSRD, namely corporate characteristics, internal and external contextual factors. In pursuing its aims, this study develops an instructive measure that can capture the quality of CSRD revealed by the Jordanian companies. Moreover, this study adopts a sample of 94 non-financial companies listed on the Amman Stock Exchange (ASE) to collect data on CSRD based on a checklist of 41 items for the seven-year period from 2010 to 2016. In term of the determinants of CSRD, this study finds that CSRD quality is positively and statistically associated with company size, company profitability, company age, media exposure, board size, auditor type, foreign ownership and foreign institutional ownership. However, CSRD quality is negatively and statistically associated with the financial leverage, the number of female directors on board, CEO duality, ownership concentration and family ownership. In addition, the results of the analysis suggest that the negative relationship between the quality of CSRD and the presence of female board members is stronger for family-owned companies. In contrast, the results of the analysis suggest that the negative relationship between the quality of CSRD and the presence of female board members is weakened when the company had more educated, skilled and qualified female directors. The findings also indicate that the determinants affecting CSRD are not necessarily relevant to the other dimensions of CSRD.

Date of Award	2020
Original language	English