Social responsibility disclosure and corporate characteristics: the case of Jordanian industrial companies

The main objectives of this paper are to evaluate social responsibility disclosure practices in the annual reports of Jordanian industrial companies and to determine the effect of certain company characteristics in explaining variation in social responsibility information found in companies' annual reports. To accomplish these objectives, a disclosure index including 37 items was applied to the annual reports of 65 industrial companies. It was found that, on an average, the company disclosed approximately 13% of the items included in the index, with only three companies receiving disclosure scores of more than 30%. These results suggest that there is a significant scope for additional disclosure in the annual reports of Jordanian industrial companies listed on the ASE. The results of the regression analysis identified size, profitability and risk to be significantly and positively associated with the disclosure of social responsibility information.