PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to attempt to identify the type and quality of social information disclosed by Lebanese commercial banks and to report on the extent of these disclosures and their relationship with size, financial performance, and other chosen variables.Design/methodology/approachDeductive in nature, this paper uses content analysis of annual report social disclosures of 24 Lebanese commercial banks to test six hypotheses related to the nature of social disclosures and their association with selected variables.FindingsThe findings provide evidence of the widespread use of this phenomenon by these banks as a means to communicate with their stakeholders. Moreover, results reveal that these banks attribute a greater importance to human resource and product and customers disclosures, whereas the availability and extent of environmental disclosure is still weak. In addition, a strong association is found between these disclosures and size and financial performance variables, whereas the relationship with the bank age is found to be a weak one. Finally, findings suggest no difference in social disclosure behavior between listed banks and banks with an overseas presence, and non‐listed banks and those operating only in Lebanon.Research limitations/implicationsFurther longitudinal and causal analyzes would shed more light on the importance and determinants of this phenomenon in small and developing economies. One obstacle to overcome in this endeavor is the non‐availability of social and environmental databases similar to the ones used by researchers in developed countries. On the research front, this paper adds to the relatively small number of studies addressing issues related to corporate social disclosure practices by banks.Practical implicationsAt the practical level, the paper attempts to inform corporate social responsibility (CSR) policies and practices of Lebanese banks which would result in more socially and ethically oriented banking activities in Lebanon.Originality/valueStudies of CSR have generally been conducted in relatively large economies with active financial and stock markets. This paper tests and applies relevant accounting theories to a developing small economy and shows that even small family‐owned banks with high public visibility can exhibit strong social and ethical awareness.

Purpose This paper aims to examine the determinants and extent of corporate social disclosure (CSD) by UAE national banks and to investigate the changes in CSD before, during and after the latest financial crisis. Design/methodology/approach Deductive in nature, this paper uses content analysis of annual reports of 16 UAE banks over a period of six years (2006-2011) to test eight hypotheses related to size, financial performance and other variables as potential explanatory variables of the CSD extent over different periods. Findings The findings show that human resources and community disclosures exhibited the highest extent of CSD over the six years. Moreover, the size and financial performance variables appear to be significant explanatory factors for the extent of CSD. The findings also indicate a strong variation in disclosure between banks with international presence and those with no such presence, while there is no significant disclosure variation between Islamic and conventional banks or during the different periods under investigation (pre, during and post recent financial crisis). Research limitations/implications Studies allowing a greater understanding of how banks with extensive governmental ownership define and disclose CSR in this particular region of the world are scarce and exploratory in nature. Consequently, the structure of national UAE banks provides a unique opportunity to understand the CSR mechanisms and disclosure of similar institutions in the world (particularly in the Arab world). This presents an interesting direction for further research. Practical implications These findings could assist UAE bankers and policymakers in integrating CSD in their corporate strategies and help the local and international business communities in understanding the characteristics of CSD in the UAE. Originality/value Comprehensive in scope, this paper provides a complete assessment of the potential explanatory proxies of CSD by UAE local banks before, during and after the recent global financial crisis. Comparable studies of the UAE banking sector have mainly focused on particular bank types (i.e. Islamic or conventional) and did not consider the effect of the recent adverse financial climate.

Grounded in legitimacy theory and deductive in nature, this paper uses content analysis of annual report social disclosures of 169 German 'universal' banks belonging to three different categories (credit, saving, and cooperative) to report on the type and quantity of social disclosure by these banks, and to test seven hypotheses related to the nature of their social disclosures and their association with size, financial performance, corporate form, and other selected variables. The findings provide evidence of the importance of social disclosure for the German banking sector as a means to legitimize their business and relay to the society the extent of their fulfillment of social obligations. Greater importance is attributed to product and customers as well as human resource disclosures. In addition, a strong positive association is found between these disclosures and the size variables as well as the number of apprentices, whereas ROE and net profits as financial performance proxies provide evidence of a significant relationship. Furthermore, the findings indicate that the quantity of social disclosure varies with bank category, corporate form and listing status, but seems to be almost unrelated to bank age and overseas presence. These promising findings could be used to inform corporate social responsibility policies and practices of German banks; nevertheless, further longitudinal analysis to validate them over time is warranted.

Not long ago, companies started investing millions of dollars on training and educating their workforce on new skills and improving prior skills. This increase in investment in training is mainly due to the rapid changes in technology and intense competition in the open market. However, this investment varied from one company to another. Training is a tool and a way to acquire new and different set of knowledge, skills and attitudes that are work related, and can have short and long term benefits for the employee and the organization. Training and development is a new process in the Lebanese market. From the many positive effects and benefits of training on companies and organizations, working conditions and career development are considered the most vital, especially to manufacturing companies. The purpose of this article is to identify the benefits and the challenges of training. Hence, a qualitative exploratory approach is used. Managers from one of the leading Lebanese manufacturing company were interviewed to detect their perceptions about the effect of training on their employees and to determine on what basis the training is provided to employees.