A Responsabilidade Social Empresarial num contexto de Crise Económica

Abstract

The role of corporate social responsibility has assumed paramount importance recently due to the economic instability we are experiencing. The most recent economic and financial crisis that began at end 2007 in United States because of liquidity shortage and loss of reputation in the banking system has led companies to take a greater interest in issues related to Corporate Social Responsibility, this leads to increasing concern of businesses understand the concept and dimensions and incorporate them into your reality. Since the financial sector has been indicted of being the main culprit of the current global financial and economic crisis, this research aims to analyze the differences in the level of disclosure of information about social responsibility among four banks of Portugal and four banks of Spain, and review differences over the years 2006, 2008 and 2010, and analyze the correlation between the level of disclosure of information about social responsibility and a set of economic variables and financial performance. The results showed an increase in disclosure levels and decreased levels of profitability and depositor confidence, between 2006 and 2010 in both countries. However it was not observed significant differences in average rates of disclosure of information about social responsibility among the banks of the two countries, Spain and Portugal, and over the three study years. The research hypotheses were only partially accepted, once only found positive and negative correlations between the level of disclosure of information about social responsibility with economic variables and financial performance in just a few banks and not on the entire sampl.