Over the last few decades there has been a growing global public awareness of the role of corporations in society. Many companies which have been credited with contributing to economic and technology progress have been criticised for creating social problems. Issues such as pollution, waste, resources depletion, product quality and safety, the rights and status of workers and the power of large corporations have become the focus of increasing attention and concern.Makower (1994) defines corporate responsibility as the right thing to do and the key to companies’ competitiveness and survival. He examines the world of corporate social responsibility (CSR) by investigating the philosophies, policies, programs and practices that bring social responsibility into the workplace in some of the world’s most successful companies and look at what is working, what is not andhow all of this can affect the bottom line. Makower (1994) also examines strategies and offer best practices that can be used to implement these policies at other companies. Furthermore, he provides examples of what corporations can do and are doing in community involvement.Furthermore, Kilcullen and Kooistra (1999) examine studies that try to prove a positive relationship and attempt to show that corporate social responsibility and profitability are not mutually exclusive. How and why companies embrace corporate responsibility (the right thing to do and the key to companies’ competitiveness and survival) are what this book is all about. They find that arguments for corporate social responsibility have centered on the long-term advantages of socially responsible behavior, advantages such as greater customer and employee loyalty and a more supportive external environment. On the other hand, stakeholder arguments have focused on contractual and interest-based reasons for CSR.Although there is no universal definition of CSR (Godfrey and Hatch, 2007), different definitions have been offered in prior research. The most comprehensive definition for CRS is given by Rizk et al. (2008:306). They define CSR as:“The process of communicating the social and environmental effects of organizations’ economic actions to particular interest groups within society and to society at large. As such, it involves extending the accountability of organizations (particularly) companies; beyond the traditional role of providing a financial account to the owners of capital, in particular shareholders. Such an extension is predicated upon the assumption that companies do have wider responsibilities than simply to make money for their shareholders.”Companies disclose CSR information in their annual reports; however, prior research focused on the experience of CSR reporting of companies in the developed countries (see for example, Elijido-Ten, 2007; Haseldine et al., 2005; Hedberg and von Malmborg, 2003; Ho and Taylor, 2007; Hussainey and Salama, 2010). Few researchers have discussed the determinants of CSR in developing countries in general and in Egypt in particular. The paper adds to the literature on CSR disclosure in three crucial respects. First it examines the popularity of different types of CSR information in a unique feature of the Egyptian business environment. Second when examining determinants of CSR disclosure, the paper introduces new explanatory variables (i.e., different types of audit quality and different types of ownership). Finally, it contributes to CSR disclosure literature by offering the first study of its type undertaken in Egypt as an example of a developing country that examines the determinants of individual and aggregated types of CSR information.The remainder of the paper is structured as follows. Section 2 explains why it is of interest to look at CSR disclosure in Egypt. Section 3 reviews prior research and develops the research hypotheses. Section 4 discusses the research design. Section 5 presents the empirical findings of the paper. Finally, conclusions, and suggestions for further research are discussed in Section 6.
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