Abstract
On 15 December 2016, new non-financial reporting requirements were implemented in the Polish Accounting Act (PAA) which would be enforced from 1 January 2017. This act resulted from the transposition of Directive 2014/95/EU. New requirements oblige certain groups of entities to disclose non-financial information on environmental, social and employee-related matters, respect for human rights, anti-corruption and bribery matters. The purpose of this paper is two-fold. Firstly, this study analyses the new non-financial reporting requirements implemented in PAA, which were created from the transposition of the Directive. Secondly, this study investigates the current extent and quality of corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting in companies listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange (WSE) and their compliance with the new requirements. The sample comprises 150 selected listed companies on the WSE. The data were collected from annual reports, separate CSR reports, and companies’ websites. Content analysis and a rating scale were used to measure the level of CSR disclosures. The results show that companies prefer annual reports to communicate voluntary CSR disclosures. In the majority of cases, CSR disclosure of companies were not compliant with the new requirements. Companies placed little emphasis on reporting about human rights and anti-corruption. This suggests that the new reporting obligation should increase the extent and quality of non-financial disclosure among Polish listed companies.
Highlights
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) was formally introduced in the European Union (EU) by the European Commission in the Green Paper [1], which defined it as “a concept whereby companies integrate social and environmental concerns in their business operations and their interaction with their stakeholders on a voluntary basis”
This study mainly addresses five research questions (RQ): RQ1: What disclosure media are preferred by Polish public-interest entities (PIEs) to communicate their CSR practices on a voluntary basis?
The results show that most Polish-listed companies use at least one channel to communicate CSR activity, with greater importance placed on annual reports as disclosure media compared to CSR reports
Summary
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) was formally introduced in the European Union (EU) by the European Commission in the Green Paper [1], which defined it as “a concept whereby companies integrate social and environmental concerns in their business operations and their interaction with their stakeholders on a voluntary basis”. The aforementioned definition highlights the view that the CSR concept is mostly focused on dialogue and interaction between a company and its stakeholders. It can be said that CSR reporting reflects the evolution of corporate reporting and includes issues concerning a company’s environmental and societal impacts and policies [2]. In this reporting process, a CSR report is a communication tool that provides information, both internally and externally, about the social and environmental aspects of the operations of companies. Despite the above data it is worth noting that reporting enterprises still form only a small minority of companies worldwide
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