A Multimethod Approach to Assess and Measure Corporate Social Responsibility Disclosure and Practices in a Developing Economy

Disclosures on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) practices of business organizations have heightened over the past few decades due to increased awareness. Major contributions in the literature on CSR practices and their disclosures come from the studies conducted in the developed world, while many developing economies like Pakistan remain under-researched and fewer revelations have been made about their CSR practices. Therefore, the present study aims to explore various aspects of CSR practices of Pakistani firms and their reporting trends. A multimethod approach has been adopted to measure CSR practices with respect to both approaches, quantitative and qualitative, for 170 listed firms from 2008 to 2015. First, content analysis is employed to develop a CSR Disclosure Index (CSRD Index) as well as five sub indices, i.e., community welfare, health and education, environment and energy, product, and customer and workforce. Second, a multidimensional financial approach is used to calculate firm’s CSR monetary spending ratio (CSR-MSR) using the monetary data of CSR activities. Results suggested that most Pakistani firms disclose more information about their product-, customer-, and stakeholder-related CSR activities and put less emphasis on health and education responsibilities. Moreover, there is a strong impact of government reforms on both the firm’s CSR disclosures and monetary giving.