International banks’ CSR disclosures after the 2008 crisis

Abstract

If you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors service information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Please visit www.emeraldinsight.com/authors for more information. About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.comEmerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society. The company manages a portfolio of more than 290 journals and over 2,350 books and book series volumes, as well as providing an extensive range of online products and additional customer resources and services.Emerald is both COUNTER 4 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation. AbstractPurpose -The purpose of this paper is to determine the corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure level of 35 international banks across the world at the end of 2013 and analyse the changes in their disclosure patterns compared to 2005 from the institutional perspective. Design/methodology/approach -Content analysis of international banks' web-sites and CSR reports. Findings -As expected, CSR disclosure scores of international banks in 2013 were significantly larger than in 2005. Despite addressing the legitimacy gap after the 2008 crisis, significant room for improvements remained in the context of sustainable products, implementation of environmental management policies and introduction of CSR initiatives (the latter especially for Northern American banks). Although the transnational context had contributed to the gradual convergence of CSR disclosure scores, the existence of differing national and organisational contexts had maintained some of the diversity across banks. Research limitations/implications -Content analysis approach used limits the possibilities to objectively grasp the depth of CSR and the sample remains biased towards larger international banks headquartered in Europe. Practical implications -Stakeholders should remain vary of "window-dressing" attempts and reward only those banks that actually contribute to the society. Social implications -Intergovernmental organisations should continue to develop both new and already existing financial sector CSR initiatives to improve the stability of the global financial sector. Originality/value -Previous studies have not investigated international banks' CSR disclosures on broader global samples during the post-2008-crisis period and have not considered the institutional context of their CSR.

The impact of country‐level institutional differences on corporate social responsibility disclosure engagement

“…There are numerous consequences, both for society and companies, associated with GFC. These include the increased unemployment rate, output collapse, lowered incomes leading to extreme poverty (Charitoudi, Giannarakis, & Lazarides, ; Dias et al, ; Laidroo & Sokolova, ). An important area for increased attention is the trust between companies and their stakeholders as the trust “indicator index” has decreased since before the financial crisis up until 2010 in most developed countries (Charitoudi et al, ).…”

The Link between Corporate Social Responsibility and Financial Performance in the Hungarian Banking Sector in the Years Following the Global Crisis

“…Among the CSP measurement practices, the framework that deserves special mention was developed by Scholtens (2008) in order to eliminate the shortcomings of ethical and CSR indices and surveys and the lack of consistency among them (attributable to the use of different factors, stakeholder groups and indicators), specifically geared towards measuring banks' social performance in a transparent manner. The use of Scholtens's framework can be increasingly observed in studies (see Relano -Paulet 2012;Laidroo -Sokolova 2015), mainly because this method enables the uniform comparison of the social performance of banks that are not included in CSR or ethical rating databases, since in such cases CSP is determined based on publicly available bank data. As shown in Table 1, Scholtens's CSP indicator consists of 5 criteria and 32 indicators in total, taking into account the international recommendations and principles pertaining to the assessment of banks' and financial organisations' CSR activities.…”

“…In the absence of the CSR indices determined by rating agencies, banks' social performance was measured relying on Scholtens's (2008) framework in two ways. First, based on Laidroo and Sokolova (2015), banks' average annual performance was determined using 29 indicators from Scholtens's framework (CSP1). Then the social performance of each bank was determined again, based on modified criteria of Scholtens's model (CSP2).…”

Regional Tendencies of Corporate Social Responsibility

“…The study which examines the activities of international banks (the Baltic countries are dominated by foreign banks) states that, as expected, CSR disclosure scores of international banks in 2013 were significantly larger than in 2005. Despite addressing the legitimacy gap after the 2008 crisis, significant room for improvements remained in the context of sustainable products, implementation of environmental management policies, and introduction of CSR initiatives [25].…”