DOI: 10.36347/sjebm.2015.v02i10.006

Pages: 1008-1016

This paper reports the findings of our study on the nature of social responsibility disclosure in annual reports of 65 manufacturing companies listed in Indian Stock Exchanges. The companies were selected from a list of top 500 companies listed in Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) following simple random sampling. The paper has reported disclosure (as well as non-disclosure) of 49 items of social information in four different social responsibility areas, namely, environment, employees, community involvement and product. Results of our study have revealed that social information items reported by our sample companies are mostly non-financial and descriptive in nature. It has been found that many important information regarding social and environmental issues have not been reported by a good number of companies. Also, number of evidences on disclosure of sensitive information is very small. Observed information deficiency, in terms of both quantity and quality, indicates that opportunity exists for improvement in corporate social disclosure practices in India.