Corporate Social Disclosure in the United Arab Emirates: Stakeholders' Perceptions and Determinants

This study aims to investigate the various aspects of corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure as perceived by the Emirati stakeholders. In addition, this study examines the extent and determinants of CSR disclosure in the annual reports of Emirati listed companies. To achieve the first objective of the study, a questionnaire was developed and delivered to respondents from five stakeholder groups (preparers, external auditors, academics, bank loan officers, and stockbrokers) to obtain their opinions regarding different aspects of CSR in the UAE such as reasons for disclosing or not disclosing CSR, benefits of CSR, user groups who have a right to corporate information, approaches that can be used as a basis to introduce CSR, methods that can be used to disclose corporate information, and locations to disclose CSR information. To achieve the second objective of the study, the content analysis was employed to examine the CSR disclosure of all the 104 Emirati listed companies in their 2009 annual reports. The findings revealed that stakeholders
desire wider disclosure in terms of CSR within the context of the UAE. The content analysis showed that the quality of the CSR disclosure received little attention from most companies. In addition, the results revealed that variations in CSR reporting by Emirati companies are related to the size of the company, the location of its
headquarters, the proportion of institutional and governmental ownerships, the proportions of Western directors and the proportion of Sheikhs on the corporate
board. The findings of the study support the main theories namely, agency, political economy, legitimacy, and stakeholder theories that are employed in the literature to
explain the voluntary disclosure by companies. However, the results demonstrated that there are currently gaps between the corporate social information expected by Emirati stakeholders and the information disclosed by Emirati companies. These findings indicate that the CSR information reported by these companies has yet to fully meet the needs of their stakeholders. The study is expected to draw the
attention of Emirati companies and policy makers on the need to extend corporate disclosure to include CSR information.