Corporate social reporting in Irish financial institutions

Abstract

This paper proposes a four‐state framework for measuring corporate social responsibility reporting and argues that TQM or excellent organisations should be in an advanced state of social responsiveness, and that this should be reflected in their reporting of such activities. A study of six Irish financial institutions is used to demonstrate the extent of social reporting in company annual reports and Web sites with a view to positioning them on the framework. Social reporting in the annual reports is compared with four European “best practice” financial institutions as well as the organisations' Web sites. Analysis shows that Irish banks are well behind the leading European banks with regard to the quality and quantity of social disclosure in their annual reports. It further shows that they disclose a greater volume of social information on their Web sites than in their annual reports. Reasons for such poor performance are attributed to the voluntary nature of social disclosure in Ireland.