Research On Corporate Social Responsibility Report Assurance Based On Sustainable Development Governance

The first assurance corporate social responsibility (CSR) report in China was the“2005annual sustainable development report of COSCO Group”. CSR report hasshown a growth spurt since Shanghai Stock Exchange and Shenzhen Stock Exchangeissued guidelines in2009. However, corporations reporting assurance engagementdidn’t follow same trend. The statistics on network of Chinese CSR report show that1525CSR reports has been issued in the first ten months of2013, which increased188compared with the same period in2012, a growth of14.1%, but only171companies had assured the CSR report. As CSR report become the window ofcorporate image for external stakeholders, the requirements for the quality andreliability of the CSR report is also on the increase. Naturally, assurance with highquality and reliability is the first choice of a corporation. It is worth mentioning that,the Third Plenary Session of the eighteenth has passed the “Central committee ofHowever, the academic study of the CSR report assurance has just arisen in China,many of the study are focused on the statistical description of foreign researchachievement like assurance standard, with the method of normative study, empiricalstudy are mostly focused on the study of external factors. So currently, with thegovernance of sustainable development has become increasingly important, there is atheoretical research value and practical significance on explore the demand for CSRreport assurance from enterprise’s internal sustainable governance.In order to lead to the necessity of this study, this article first reviews the study ofsustainable governance and CSR report assurance at home and abroad which includeindustry organization and institutional research results and academic researchachievements, as well as their combinations. Secondly it expounds the theoreticalfoundation of CSR report assurance, including the sustainable development theory,principal-agent theory, resource dependence theory, corporate reputation theory and signaling theory. Thirdly, this article introduced the research design in detail; take theFortune top250enterprises of China in2010-2012as sample, the CSR guidelinecommittee and CSR strategy as explanatory variables; firm size, the scale of debt,compilation basis, social responsibility sensitive industry as control variables; andmade a simple introduction on Logistic regression analysis. Next is the analysis anddescription of the empirical results, including descriptive statistics, non-parametrictest, correlation analysis, goodness of the model and Logistic regression results. Thenthe empirical results show that the CSR committee has a high positive correlationwith CSR assurance, and the effect is positive. Similarly, CSR strategy also has a highpositive correlation with CSR assurance. Finally, concluded and make threerecommendations drawn from national policies, accounting firms and corporate itself.