CORPORATE SOCIAL REPORTING IN EGYPT: NATURE AND DETERMINANTS

Purpose: This paper explores the nature and determinants of corporate social reporting (CSR) in Egyptian listed companies using publicly available sources, including annual reports, stand-alone reports and corporate internet disclosures.
Design/methodology/approach: A 55-point content analysis from 6 categories was developed using both Egyptian sustainability reporting guidelines and the Global Reporting Initiative reporting guidelines. Both the index score and number of sentences were used to measure CSR. Multiple OLS regression was used to test the significance of both corporate governance mechanisms and firms’ characteristics in explaining the variations in CSR. Mann-Whitney U tests were used to measure the differences between governmental and non-governmental firms.
Findings: The results of descriptive statistics show that 54.8% of the sample reported CSR. Community & social information was dominant under the three disclosure channels. Empirical findings show a significant relationship between CSR disclosure and the existence of a CSR division, the existence of family directors on the board and those companies which are cross-listed. The results do not show a significant relationship between CSR and non-executive directors, CEO duality, institutional ownership, foreign ownership, size, profitability, leverage and audit firm type. The results also show that non-governmental companies use varied channels of disclosure more than government-owned companies.
Originality/value: As the most comprehensive study to date of its kind in an Egyptian context, the paper contributes to investigating empirically the link between CSR and both corporate governance mechanisms and firm specific characteristics.