The Level Of Corporate Social Responsibility Disclosure In Jordan

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has become important and strategic issue for business in many countries. Over the past three decades, companies have shown a growing interest in the practice of CSR activities through disclosure of these practices in the financial reports. In Jordan, the concepts and principles of CSR are still a voluntary mechanism. There are differences in the implementation of CSR activities between Jordan and other developed countries because there are differences in the culture, nature of economic system, and geographical aspects. Thus, the main purpose of this paper is to expand our knowledge about corporate social responsibility disclosure (CSRD) and about the position of the Jordanian companies toward this issue. This paper investigates the level of CSRD in the annual reports of the 164 non-financial companies that were listed on Amman stock exchange representing the services & industrial sectors from 2011 to 2014. This study developed the CSRD index based on Global Reporting Initiatives (GRI) framework. GRI framework covers six main dimensions of CSR activities which are Economic, Environment, Human Rights, product, Labor relations, and Society dimensions. Content Analysis was used to measure the CSRD index. The results indicated that the general level of CSRD for Jordanian listed firms is 34.1%. The economic activities dimension is the most disclosed by the firms while the human rights dimension is the least disclosed.