Time and Country Specific Institutional Effects on Corporate Social Disclosure by Financial Institutions: Evidence from Fourteen European Countries

Abstract

In this paper, we examine time and country specific institutional effects on CSR disclosures by big bank in fourteen Western European banks. For time effect, we compared banks’ CSR disclosures in 2005, when societal expectation of banks’ CSR disclosures was considered low, to their CSR disclosures in 2008, when social expectations from banks were higher due to the legitimacy gaps. For the institutional effects, we examine the impacts of legal origin and cultural institutions on CSR disclosures of banks in the countries studied. We find that banks are intransigent in their CSR disclosures as they maintained a constant CSR score for both periods. We also find significant relationships between countries’ legal origin and the nature of disclosures made by banks. Consistent with our hypotheses, we find that banks operating in high uncertainty avoidance cultures make more CSR disclosures than banks in low uncertainty avoidance culture, but individualism/collectivism cultural dimensions were not relevant to banks CSR disclosures. We made important contribution to literature and identified policy implications of our findings.