Motivations for an organisation within a developing country to report social responsibility information: Evidence from Bangladesh

The aim of the paper is to describe and explain, using a combination of interviews and content analysis, the social and environmental reporting practices of a major garment export organisation within a developing country. Senior executives from a major organisation in Bangladesh are interviewed to d...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Accounting, auditing & accountability journal auditing & accountability journal, 2008, Vol.21 (6), p.850-874
Main Authors: Islam, Muhammad Azizul, Deegan, Craig
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Annual reports
Bangladesh
Child labor
Clothing industry
Content analysis
Corporate responsibility
Corporate social responsibility
Developing countries
Disclosure
Environment
Environmental accounting
Exports
Industrialized nations
Information dissemination
Interviews
LDCs
Legitimacy
Organizational behaviour
Perception
Perceptions
Social responsibility
Stakeholder
Stakeholders
Statistical analysis
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Summary:The aim of the paper is to describe and explain, using a combination of interviews and content analysis, the social and environmental reporting practices of a major garment export organisation within a developing country. Senior executives from a major organisation in Bangladesh are interviewed to determine the pressures being exerted on them in terms of their social and environmental performance. The perceptions of pressures are then used to explain - via content analysis - changing social and environmental disclosure practices. The results show that particular stakeholder groups have, since the early 1990s, placed pressure on the Bangladeshi clothing industry in terms of its social performance. This pressure, which is also directly related to the expectations of the global community, in turn drives the industry's social policies and related disclosure practices. The findings show that, within the context of a developing country, unless we consider the managers' perceptions about the social and environmental expectations being imposed upon them by powerful stakeholder groups then we will be unable to understand organisational disclosure practices. This paper is the first known paper to interview managers from a large organisation in a developing country about changing stakeholder expectations and then link these changing expectations to annual report disclosures across an extended period of analysis. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]
ISSN:0951-3574
1758-4205
DOI:10.1108/09513570810893272