Types of financial and non-financial information disclosure about corporate social responsibility

• Autor(a) principal: Faria, Maria José da Silva
• Data de Publicação: 2017
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por; eng
• Título da fonte: Cadernos EBAPE.BR
• Texto Completo: https://periodicos.fgv.br/cadernosebape/article/view/59702
• topic: Social responsibility; Disclosure; Financial information; Non-financial information; Responsabilidad social; Divulgación; Información financiera; Información no financiera; Responsabilidade social; Divulgação; Informação financeira; Informação não financeira

Information on corporate social responsibility has gained importance in the last decades, not only to users of this information but also to those responsible for preparing it. This importance has intensified since 2007 due to the financial crisis in the US, which was reflected in Portugal in 2008. The growing volume of information can be presented in different ways, portraying actions that influence the company’s performance and how stakeholders see the company and its relationship with the community. The aim of this article is to present different forms of publicizing information on corporate social responsibility and highlight the channels strategically used to this end. Advantages and disadvantages of means currently used to publicize this kind of information are detailed, contributing to the debate on this issue. The literature review was based on recent studies, in order to assess the status of the issue. As for methodology, it is an exploratory analysis of information published on official websites of Portuguese companies listed at the Lisbon Stock Exchange in the first semester of 2016. The results show that there is a variety of information publicized by companies on their activities regarding social responsibility: written and non-written, financial and non-financial, internal and external. The websites and traditional reports seem to be the most used forms of publication, and reports are more often focused on qualitative than quantitative information.