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ocial disclosure are categorized as voluntary disclosures since it is not required by any financial disclosure regime, accounting standards, the stock exchange rules and regulations, and the Companies Act in Malaysia. Some only provide guideline for the companies, not necessary must complies with it.

Corporate social disclosure can be defined as the provision of financial and non-financial information relating to an organization’s interaction with its physical and social environment, as stated in annual report or separate social reports (Hackston and Milne, 1996). Corporate social disclosure includes details of the physical environment, energy, human resource, products and community involvement matters.

According to Gray et al. (2001), social and environmental disclosure can be typically thought of as comprising information relating to a corporation’s activities, aspirations and public image with regard to environmental, employee, consumer issues, energy usage, equal opportunities, fair trade, corporate governance and the like. Social and environmental disclosure may also take place through different media such as annual report, advertising, focus group, employee councils, booklets, school education and so forth.

The definition used by Hackston and Milne (1996) covers the five themes that can be found in company’s annual report and websites in Malaysia which were environment, human resource, energy, community involvement and products, and also used Gray et al. (2001) as the definition for the extent of disclosures through different media such as annual report, advertising, focus group, employee councils, booklets, school education and so forth.

An increasing public awareness of corporate social responsibility has developed a criticism towards the use of profit as an all-inclusive measure for corporate performance (Hackston & Milne, 1996). This in turn has led to a growing attention by the accountancy bodies to consider Corporate Social Responsibility in accounting practices including Malaysia. There is no consistent standard or regulations concerning the disclosure of social and environmental issues. Each country has its own legislative regulations. In Malaysia, it has its own Environmental Act but still does not impose a mandatory disclosure in annual reports.

The disclosure of social and environmental information attracts attention as the information itself involves the living quality despite the fact that its reporting is voluntary in nature (Mohamad and Ahmad, 2001).

3.2 Reason of Corporate Social Responsibility Disclosure

Legitimacy theory relates the extent and types of corporate social disclosure in the annual report to be directly related to management’s perceptions about the concerns of the community. Lindblom (1994) in his legitimacy theory identified four reasons why companies disclosed social information. Firstly, is to inform the “relevant public” the organization’s performance and activities in response to any environmental changes.

Secondly, is to change the perception of relevant public. Thirdly, is to deflect attention from issues concerned. The last reason is to change the outside expectation of their performance when they feel its “relevant public” have unr本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。