Social Reporting Practices of Corporate Entities In Sri Lanka

Abstract

The growth of the public expectations in the early 1990’s, crated the need for reporting on non-financial aspects such as corporate governance and environmental reporting etc. in addition to the financial aspects. The concept of social accounting and reporting was added by the businesses to their public reports from the late 1990’s. This was done voluntarily. The concept of ‘Sustainability Reporting’, which includes reporting on environmental, social and economic impacts, was developed in around year 2000, and is currently used by many organizations worldwide. This study has been conducted in order to identify the reasons as to why the business entities has started to report about their social responsibility, to identify the problems and issues they have faced when reporting on social responsibility and also to identify the advantages they have gained through disclosing their social responsibility activities to the public. Three research sits were selected among six awardees of the competition, which conducted by the ACCA Sri Lanka branch for “Sustainable Reporting for Integration of Business with the Environment”. Three theoretical perspectives of reporting on corporate social responsibility i.e. stakeholder theory, legitimacy theory and political economy theory were applied to drive the conclusion of the study. As researchers identified corporate entities report on CSR with the expectations such as to fulfill customer needs, to build the company image and to show that they are socially responsible. Further, they recognize stakeholders’ right for information as well. Recognition, awards, enhancement of image, satisfied stakeholders and good relationship with the society are the advantages witch they expect through CSR reporting.