Investigating Social and Environmental Reporting by DSE Listed Companies in Bangladesh

In recent years, common-purpose financial statements and reporting are found to be inadequate to fulfil the demands of stakeholders who want some non-financial information related to society and the environment where corporations work. For increasing the level of accountability and provide intangible benefits for society, corporations generally disclose social and environmental information out of their social responsibility. However, the question remains as to whether multinational companies are doing good for our society. Thus, this study aims at assessing the level of corporate social and environmental disclosure (CSED) of the companies and identifying the factors affecting their CSED. A checklist of 60 items has been used for scoring CSED status following a dichotomous procedure under an unweighted approach from the annual reports of 10 multinational companies listed on DSE for the financial years 2014-2018. This study is based on resource dependency theory as a reason for managerial actions to engage in social and environmental issues. A multiple linear regression model has been employed to examine the association between CSED and its determinants. The descriptive results show that sample companies disclose 42 items on average. The study also finds a significant negative correlation between CSED and total assets and leverage, and a significant positive correlation between CSED and net profit margin, listing age and number of shareholders. The findings of the multiple regression analysis revealed that total assets, listing age and numbers of shareholders are the important determinants of CSED. It is suggested that policymakers should consider these factors of corporate social and environmental reporting while formulating further regulations.