| Social responsibility accounting, which is the identification, monitoring, measurement, and reporting of the social and economic effects of business institutions on society, has been of interest to the accounting profession. This is evident by the various reports by the committee on non-financial measure of effectiveness. This study investigates social responsibility disclosure rating of 319 corporations by the Council on Economic Priorities (CEP). The main objective of the study is to determine whether a relationship exists between certain characteristics of the firm and social responsibility disclosure rating.; The framework used to guide this study was the agency theory and the stakeholders' theory. In both theories, the firm is viewed as having an expressed or implied social contract with society and provides social disclosure to inform society of contract compliance.; Data for social disclosure were obtained from the Council on Economic Priorities, as were data on charitable giving and community outreach. Financial data of these same companies were obtained from Company Data Direct FIS (Financial Information Service).; The regression analysis was conducted to provide a statistical measure of the relationship between the dependent variable (Social Disclosure) and each of the independent variables. For the industry analysis, the t-test for the independent means was conducted to determine whether or not the assumption that the variances in the distributions are equivalent.; The analysis shows a significant relationship, though the size of the relationship was not that strong. Perhaps other variables are more predictive of social disclosure. Although, specific null hypotheses were rejected, there are other factors that are needed to explain social disclosure. Given the variables used in all analyses, the best predictor for social disclosure is a linear combination of growth in terms of revenue, charitable giving, community outreach, and if the firm's business is in aerospace, communications or electronics. |
