CSR Practices in Polish and Spanish Stock Listed Companies: A Comparative Analysis

Abstract

In recent years, many studies have been carried out on corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting by enterprises. However, none of the previous surveys have covered CSR reporting in countries in Western Europe (Spain) and Central Europe (Poland). In our research, we looked for answers to two research questions. The first was aimed at answering whether the industry represented by a given company influenced the number of disclosures in CSR reporting. The second question was to answer whether there were differences between Poland and Spain in the amount of disclosure in CSR reporting. We carried out a statistical analysis of the collected research material, under which we performed non-parametric tests as all of the variables for the distribution were not normal (Shapiro–Wilk test). We performed both the U Mann–Whitney and Kruskal–Wallis tests, which allowed us to answer our questions. The obtained results indicated that enterprises from the fuel and energy sectors as well as the financial industry provided more CSR disclosure than the other industries. There was a significant difference in the number of CSR disclosures between Poland and Spain, where more disclosures in CSR reporting were recorded in Spain.

Business Ethics Crisis and Social Sustainability. The Case of the Product “Pura Vida” in Peru

“…Our methodological approach has focused on the social perception-both external, on the part of civil society, and internal, on the part of the members of staff inside the company-of CSR; some other interesting methods could be used to assess the weight and importance of CSR in a given country, such as the ones used by [7] to compare Spain and Poland. One of the main goals of responsible practices is reporting to society, through disclosure information about the social, economic and environmental performance of companies [51].…”

“…Following the classic work of Karl Polanyi (1957) [4,5], the market must be limited by laws and certain types of regulations, otherwise it may negatively influence society, but this is always under the idea of a correct government and adequate public policies. Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) refers to the impact of an enterprise on the economic, environmental and social spheres in which it operates [6,7]. CSR can either be regarded as pursuing objectives similar to the welfare state (reducing the negative effects of market forces) or as antagonistic to these objectives (furthering of market forces) [8,9].…”

KPIs Reporting and Financial Performance in the Transition to Mandatory Disclosure: The Case of Italy

“…More recently, research is focusing on disclosure of KPIs in the annual reports of listed companies-representing the typical firms asked to comply with the EU Directive-and to investigate the nexus between the adoption of financial and non-financial indicators by companies that fulfil the regulatory obligation through the adoption of GRI guidelines [30][31][32][89][90][91][92].…”

“…In light of the above, the transposition of the EU Directive 2014/95 on NFI [27] by the member states in response to the harmonization principle is steadily impressing a change in mandatory reporting for large companies, who are requested to include relevant NFI in a specific section of their annual report [28][29][30][31][32].As a result of this regulation, we can observe a path of convergence between voluntary and mandatory reporting, for those firms that had already experimented with the adoption of social or sustainability reporting, given that the European Commission has acknowledged some national, EU-based and international frameworks as appropriate for complying with the directive [33][34][35][36].…”

The Relationships among Social, Environmental, Economic CSR Practices and Digitalization in Polish Energy Companies

“…Within this group of considerations, one may note the substantial role of the historical context of a country. For instance, Garstecki et al [85] point out that participating in politics of a multinational unions' organization (e.g., the European Union) enables to take advantage of financial sources, various CSR practices, as well as developing the awareness of the importance of CSR.…”