Resumo

Despite the notable increase in the attention given to corporate social responsibility (CSR) currently, there are different levels of CSR activities and practices among companies. Many internal factors may explain the variations in the extent of firms' CSR and, consequently, in their voluntary corporate social disclosure (CSD). However, external factors, such as institutional pressures, financial market development, governance, transparency and accountability, also affect the degree of CSD.

Since the country where firms operate largely determines these external factors, it is important to examine the country's influence on CSD. Therefore, this research seeks to contribute to the CSD literature by analyzing the phenomenon through the country level and not the firm level, as most studies do. This paper aims to investigate the association between the countries’ development stage and the level of corporate social disclosure of firms operating in these countries.

The theoretical background included the discussion on CSR, CSD, and the country influence on CSR and CSD. Research hypotheses are based on the argument that the demand for CSD tend to grow with increasing economic development of the country. In addition, societies concerned with social issues might present stakeholder groups with more salience. However, companies operating in countries whose society and stakeholders places more pressure for CSR will present higher levels of CSD.

We collected data from The Global Competitiveness Report 2014/2015 in order to measure the stage of the development of countries. The report is released by the World Economic Forum (WEF) and gathers information about the microeconomic and macroeconomic foundations of national competitiveness of 144 countries. In order to analyze the CSD, we considered the database of Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) in 2014. The research hypotheses were tested through correspondence analysis.

The findings confirm the hypotheses that there is an association between countries' stage of development and the disclosure level of these countries. The results showed that countries in the first stages of development present lower level of CSD, countries in middle stages are associated to medium level of CSD and countries in the advanced stage present higher level of CSD. This association is explained considering institutional issues and stakeholder pressures.

This paper contributes to the understanding of the factors that may influence differences in disclosure among countries. Since most studies about CSD focus on characteristics in the firms’ level such as size, industry, and managers’ motivations, this study contributes by presenting evidences on the macro level.

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