Analysis of corporate social disclosure practices in annual reports: an experience with the private commercial banking sector of Bangladesh

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to investigate the practices of corporate social disclosure of the private commercial banks of Bangladesh. For content analysis, data samples are basically taken from the secondary sources, such as annual reports of 25 (83.33%) banks out of 30 listed private commercial banks in Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE) for a four year period (2008-2011). A list of 34 items related to Corporate Social Reporting Disclosure is developed from different literature which contains four major aspects such as Background/General Corporate Information; Directors Information; Employees Information and Community & other services. No other studies have previously explored the commitment to environmental and social disclosure by the private commercial banking sector in Bangladesh using a multi-year data. Being a developing country, most commonly reported items of corporate social disclosure on the annual reports are information on bank’s official address, email address of the bank, name of the directors, number of employees working, training and development programs for employees and scholarship to students and donation to art, sports and charity. This study shows that banks are well aware of disclosing their general corporate information (39.36% - 43.50%). But the percentages of information revealed about community service and employees for a four year period are (23.41% - 26.73%) and (18.56% - 23.12%) respectively. However, the directors information (12.72% - 16.95%) disclosed in the annual reports are not that much satisfactory. Interestingly, majority of the banks devoted a considerable space in the annual report related to community involvement activities such as tree plantation, city beautification, scholarships to students, health care, sponsoring sports tournaments, art competitions and musical concerts. Although employees featured prominently, photographs of social activities were included in the annual reports of these banks. The study contributes to the existing literature by providing empirical evidence of the status of Corporate Social Responsibility reporting in the developing country context for a multi-year period.