Content area
Full text
ECONOMIC AND BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT Ataur Rahman Belal, Corporate Social Responsibility Reporting in Developing Countries: The Case of Bangladesh, Ashgate Publishing Limited, Gower House, England, 2008, 170pp, $55, Hard.
While the international debate on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is about half a century old, the discourse on CSR and sustainability reporting and the disclosures is a development of the 1980s. Since 1990s there has been a growing literature on social and environmental accounting. In many developing countries specific environmental standards and regulations have been introduced. In the specific context of the emerging markets the reporting systems, practices and debates on the impact of disclosures did not emerge until the end of the previous century. International debate on sustainability began with the publication of the UN publication on "Our Common Future" (1988). And, most multinational corporations and large domestic companies in the Western markets made a transition from CSR practices to sustainability programmes, comprehensively dealing with the Triple Bottom Line elements. The involvement of specialised civil society organisations worldwide focused on issues such as human rights, poverty, health, corruption. The Global Compact of the UN in 1999 reinforced this debate. Professional organisations in the developed economies evolved standards and measures for social and environmental accounting in the last thirty years as the demands for CSR reporting and disclosures began to be made more explicit. In addition to this, demand was fuelled by the accelerated changes brought about in the corporate governance systems in the developed countries since the 1990s such as Europe, the UK and the USA. Large corporations also had joined other affiliations like Global Reporting Initiatives, Transparency International, among others.
The term CSR reporting implies the process of communicating the content and implications of CSR measures and...