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Corporate social responsibility disclosure: Perspectives from sell-side and buy-side financial analysts

Joanna Krasodomska (Financial Accounting Department, Cracow University of Economics, Krakow, Poland)
Charles H. Cho (ESSEC Business School, Cergy Pontoise Cedex, France, and Schulich School of Business, York University, Toronto, Canada)

Sustainability Accounting, Management and Policy Journal

ISSN: 2040-8021

Article publication date: 6 March 2017

1959

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to examine the usage of non-financial information related to corporate social responsibility (CSR) issues from the perspective of sell-side analysts (SSAs) and buy-side analysts (BSAs) employed in Poland-based financial institutions.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors conducted a survey among financial analysts with the use of the computer-assisted telephone interview (CATI) method and an online questionnaire. The adopted methods included purposeful, quota sampling and snowball sampling.

Findings

Results indicate that financial analysts make use of CSR disclosures very rarely and attribute little importance to such information. Despite the limited use of CSR information and negative assessments of its quality, respondents are in favor of making a more frequent use of CSR disclosures. Finally, except for an analyst’s attitude toward the “comparability in time” information characteristic, results do not indicate any significant differences between SSAs’ and BSAs’ responses.

Research limitations/implications

The limited number of questionnaires prevented the use of more sophisticated statistical methods and the formulation of conclusions that could apply to the entire population. In addition, although the adopted CATI method provides a number of advantages, it also has its limitations – interviews had limited time and the questions along with the answers had to take into account the respondents’ limited perception ability.

Practical implications

The results of this study suggest that CSR disclosures have limited usage for financial analysts, at least in the Polish context. Further, not only do respondents rarely make use of CSR disclosures but they also give low assessments to their quality. This implies that the concept of CSR remains relatively far from becoming a priority; hence, some measures and incentives may be necessary.

Originality/value

The paper adds to a relatively small number of studies that have dealt with the issue of non-financial information and its usefulness for SSAs and BSAs in Central and Eastern Europe.

Keywords

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank Amanda Peterson (discussant at the 2015 Conference of the American Accounting Association’s Public Interest Section) and the participants of the 2015 Conference of the American Accounting Association’s Public Interest Section. The authors would also like to acknowledge financial support provided by the Global Research Network program through the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF-2016S1A2A2912421) as well as by the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education – Grant for Young Researchers. Finally, the authors wish to thank the IAAER-ACCA Early Career Researcher Workshop in conjunction with the AMIS 2014 conference held at ASE in Bucharest and the IAAER-ACCA Paper Development Workshop in conjunction with the 12th IAAER World Congress of Accounting of Educators and Researchers held in Florence to have created venues and opportunities to develop this research paper. Charles H. Cho is based at Schulich School of Business, York University, Toronto, Canada.

Citation

Krasodomska, J. and Cho, C.H. (2017), "Corporate social responsibility disclosure: Perspectives from sell-side and buy-side financial analysts", Sustainability Accounting, Management and Policy Journal, Vol. 8 No. 1, pp. 2-19. https://doi.org/10.1108/SAMPJ-02-2016-0006

Publisher

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Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2017, Emerald Publishing Limited

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