The Influence of CSR Disclosure Structure on Corporate Financial Performance: Evidence from Stakeholders’ Perspectives

AbstractThis study aims to understand the potential influence of CSR disclosure structure on corporate financial performance. Content analyses had been carried out on the 2009-2011 annual reports of the leading 30 public listed companies in Malaysia. For terms of methodology, sentence count was used as a unit of analysis to measure disclosure depth, while a finer-grained analysis of the CSR disclosure structure was performed to measure disclosure breadth and disclosure concentration. There was found to be a significant relationship between CSR disclosure structure and the corporate financial performance in the subsequent year. The results suggest that good financial performers are those companies that display a relatively high breadth of disclosure, while at the same time demonstrate the ability to disclose a concentrated structure of CSR disclosure to the definitive stakeholders. The findings of this study imply that it is not the volume of disclosure that matters, but the variety of items disclosed and concentration to the definitive stakeholders. On one hand, the study findings generally offer insights into the workings of successful reporting strategies for business organisations in Malaysia, while on the other hand, the study does provide inputs pertaining to the betterment of the CSR framework, for Bursa Malaysia and the relevant regulatory bodies to deliberate upon