Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Disclosure and Corporate Performance for Malaysian Plantation and Consumer Product Sectors

Abstract

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities have turn out to be important for corporate strategy in businesses. With an increased pressure from the stakeholders, these require the management of a company to be transparent and reliable in reporting their CSR activities. Perhaps, it is also imperative for the financial performance in a long term. Thus, the purpose of this study is to investigate the extensiveness of corporate social responsibility disclosure (CSRD) among plantation and consumer products listed companies on Bursa Malaysia. Additionally, this study looking evidence on the relationship between CSRD and company financial performance (CFP) of selected companies. The data is obtained through content analysis of the company annual reports and stand-alone sustainability reports for the period of 2003-2013. Based on the stratified sampling method, 40 companies have been selected. The four independent variables are the CSR framework outlined by Bursa Malaysia (community, environment, marketplace and workplace) and the dependent variables (return on asset and Tobin’s Q) is used in this study. Data were analyzed using E-views software. The findings discovered that consumer product sector recorded the highest CSRD which the workplace dimension become the preference while plantation is the least sector. Furthermore, the findings from the panel data regression models on the impact of CSRD associated with CFP, it revealed that there is a mixed relationship associated with return on assets (ROA) and Tobin’s Q (TQ). The findings of this study were particularly important not only to the existing literature but also for both sectors to consider the importance of CSR activities in their business operation activities.