Corporate social reporting and assurance: The state of the art

Abstract

This research reviews the corporate social responsibility disclosure literature based on 330 articles in the 36 main journals in the Thomson Reuters InCities Journal Citation Reports categories of Business, Finance (Accounting), Management, Ethics and others related to Environmental Sciences/Planning and Development. The framework includes predictors of socially responsible disclosure and assurance related to individual, organizational and institutional factors, as well as impacts that we classify as external (i.e., market reactions) or internal (i.e., firm performance). In addition, we establish the moderator and mediator variables with a view to examining whether the relationship between social responsibility reporting/assurance services and its predictors and impacts change. The review reveals important research gaps that allow us to provide suggestions about future research in terms of empirical perspectives.

Keywords

• Corporate social reporting
• Corporate social disclosure
• Sustainability reporting
• Sustainability disclosure
• Environmental reporting
• Environmental disclosure