Research On Information Disclosure Of Listed Corporate Social Responsibility

Research on corporate social responsibility was originated in the early years of the 20th century, and flourished in the last two decades of the same century. There was so much research material published in this aspect. In the face of our common problem of continuable development, there has been both a revival on research of corporate social responsibility in western academic circle, and a new rise in China. As the most important aspect of corporate social responsibility, information disclosure causes special concern by the theoretical and practical circles.In this paper, I make a research on motives of information disclosure in corporate social responsibility, hoping to find efficient ways of enhancing its level, and to protect the interest of stakeholders. The advantage of enhancing the level of information disclosure entails two aspects. On the one hand, it is of benefit to improving the corporate supervision and regulating the activities of listed companies. On the other hand, it is good for raising public confidence and credit to the companies, enlarging the market of their products, increasing the corporate competition capacity, supplying the companies with conditions for their continuable development. In this paper, I analyze the motives of information disclosure of listed corporate social responsibility, on the basis of western intellectual results and Chinese institutional circumstance, and reach the conclusion that it is external pressure and internal interest which drive the information disclosure. Furthermore, I make a positive examination on the influential factors of information disclosure with the data in Shenzhen and Shanghai Stock change from the year of 2006 to 2008.There are altogether 6 chapters in this paper.In introduction, I make an outline of the background of corporate social responsibility and the current research status in quo in China firstly, pointing out the significance of this paper. Secondly, I define the related conceptions and show the logic of the paper, viz. the research will spread on the basis of current outcomes, taking the annual reports of Chinese listed companies as objects, and using both normal and positive methods. The second chapter is about literature summary. Firstly, I make a review on the development of corporate social responsibility in western world, and propose that the definition and character of corporate social responsibility in this paper is that it is legal and moral obligations to the stakeholders burdened by the companies and their managers. Secondly, I outline the research clues of corporate social responsibility research. According to the focuses of western scholars, research of corporate social responsibility is divided into five stages, which are specific corporate social responsibility, corporate social response, corporate social representation, unity of corporate social responsibility and theory of stakeholders and corporate citizen. Thirdly, I make a conclusion on the research status in quo in China, finding that it is still lying on the stage of introducing and imitating western research. Finally, I make a review on research of information disclosure, finding that there has been specific interpretative theory in western academic circle, while Chinese scholars need to go further on profound problems.Chapter 3 is about theoretical analysis and research presuppositions. By analyzing the practical motives of corporate social responsibility and information disclosure, especially the four kinds of power (viz. legitimacy justification, pressure of stakeholders, political and social pressure and corporate managing policies ), I propose that the information disclosure of Chinese listed corporate social responsibility is the outcome of external pressure and internal interests, which are respectively about the outer governance circumstance and inner governance structure. By analysis on the institutional background of Chinese corporate social responsibility, I make two major presuppositions. One is that the difference of corporate outer governance affects the difference of information disclosure. The other is that the difference of inner governance structure affects the difference of information disclosure. In order to examine the effects of the aforementioned two aspects on information disclosure, I choose marketization difference, corporate scale, corporate financial status, character of industry, character of stock equity and character of directorate as indices to measure corporate outer governance circumstance and inner governance structure. Furthermore, I divide the two major presuppositions into 7 sub-presuppositions so as to make an examination in Chapter 5.The fourth chapter is about measurement of the listed corporate social responsibility and information disclosure indices. I firstly illustrate the methods of content analysis and indices, and build up the evaluating system of Chinese corporate social responsibility and their information disclosure. Secondly, I analyze the annual reports of listed companies, build up the relating information disclosure indices, and make a descriptive statistical list on the dices, which show that the general level of the information disclosure is not high. Thirdly, I make a descriptive statistical list of disclosure status. With the analysis on the annual reports and social responsibility reports of listed companies, I believe that Chinese listed companies disclose their information mainly with annual reports, that there are few companies which issue social responsibility reports, but that there is an ascending trend in amount of the companies for the later kinds. After a serious check on enrollment place, stock equity character and supervising organization of corporate social responsibility, I find that there is an evident difference among such companies: 1. There are more companies in regions of high-degreed marketization; 2. There are more companies in regions of high-leveled supervision; 3. There is little effect of stock equity character on social responsibility reports; 4.Government-controlled companies are more willing to issue the reports than the other companies; 5. The social responsibility reports are scarce in their information capacity, disorder in content and inconsistent in modes.In Chapter 5, I make a positive analysis on the influential factors of information disclosure for Chinese corporate social responsibility. On the basis of the indices established in Chapter 4, I testify the 7 sub-presuppositions proposed in Chapter 3 with the data of China's listed companies, and examine the effect of outer governance circumstance and inner governance structure on corporate information disclosure. In the concrete examination, I take the method of propelling the controlling variables in stages to build up a multi-linear Model, make a regressive analysis with the data of listed companies in Shenzhen and Shanghai Stock change, and examine the results for its stability. My conclusion is that the institutional atmosphere takes evident effect on information disclosure, which means the higher the degree of marketization, the more the disclosed information. In the meanwhile, I find that the stakeholders, the legitimacy justification and political and social pressure all drive the force of disclosing more information. In the Model, all of the aforementioned variables passed the examination. Therefore, I come to a conclusion that the current disclosing motive of Chinese listed corporate information is from external pressure, and that the companies disclosed more information under the cooperative press of government, stakeholders and society.In the Conclusion, I propose that the current level of information disclosure in China is low, that it is external pressure that causes the information disclosure, and that the factors that influence information disclosure are both outer constitutional circumstance and stakeholders, and inner corporate characters, such as its scale, financial status and supervising organization. To these questions, I give some suggestion as follows. We need to enhance the contribution of inner power of information disclosure on condition that we should keep the outer supervision. The shortcoming of this paper is that I need to improve the choosing and measuring of related variables. Actually, the measuring of information disclosure level is a difficult point, which needs a consistent research. I will keep my eyes on this field in the coming days.Comparing with the current research, there is some contribution made in this paper.Firstly, I choose all of the listed companies from 2006 to 2008 as the research objects, which are more representative and valuable. However, in the current research, we find that only several trades and companies are chosen which cause the relative conclusion to be in a narrow scope.Secondly, I use the institutional variable in the research of information disclosure, which enriches the research perspectives of this field, because although it is in consensus that institutional atmosphere is an important variable in corporate governance research, it is rare to bring it in the research of information disclosure.Thirdly, I analyze the information disclosure motive of China's listed companies under the particular institutional background of China, and propose that there are two motives for the information disclosure of China's listed company, which are profit drive and pressure drive. And also I make an examination on the motives of information disclosure with the data of the corporate annual reports, and believe that in the current period, the motive of information disclosure for Chinese companies is the drive of outer pressure, which supply the theory of information disclosure with new element.Fourthly, I build up the information disclosure index of social responsibility in Chinese listed companies. Actually, there is no identical framework of measurement in the current literature on information disclosure. What I do in this paper establish a base for the research in this field.The reform on marketization caused a deep change in the aspects of economy, society, law and political system, which also affected the economic activity of micro-subjects. In recent year, the government made more and more rules to make the stock market normal and perfectly, and the problem of protection on stakeholders caused more and more intention. In the meanwhile, we need to realize that there are still some problems to be solved on the system of supervision, the regulation of corporate action and the disclosure of information in China's stock market. In my idea, the motive of information disclosure in China is a result of different forces in the transition change. Research on information disclosure is significant in reinforcing the protection on stakeholders, in improving the quality of information disclosure, and in promoting the continuable development of economy.