Social & Environmental Disclosure in Jordanian Annual Reports

Issues in Social and Environmental Accounting
Vol. 2, No. 2 Dec 2008/Jan 2009
Pp. 198-210

Social and Environmental Disclosure in the
Annual Reports of Jordanian Companies

Ku Nor Izah Ku Ismail
Abdul Hadi Ibrahim
College of Business
Universiti Utara Malaysia

Abstract

Recently, much attention has been devoted by researchers to study social and environmental
disclosure among corporations. Most of the studies were conducted in developed countries,
with only a handful being undertaken in developing countries. This study aims to investigate
the extent of social and environmental disclosure in the annual reports of Jordanian companies
and examine if the level of disclosure is influenced by size of firm, government ownership and
industry. In particular, disclosure with regard to environmental issues, community involvement
and human resource are examined. Using a sample of 60 companies in the manufacturing and
service sectors, content analysis is used to measure the level of disclosure. The findings indi-
cate that 85% of the companies somehow disclose social and environmental information. Hu-
man resource is the most disclosed theme while the environmental issue had the lowest
disclosure among the companies. In addition, a significant positive association is found be-
tween company size and social and environmental disclosure, and companies with high govern-
ment ownership tend to have a lower level of disclosure compared to companies with low gov-
ernment ownership. On the overall, no significant relationship was found between industry type
and the level of social and environmental disclosure. However, when only environmental issues
are examined, manufacturing companies tend to disclose more of the items compared to service
companies.

Keywords: social and environmental disclosure, social reporting, environmental reporting,
annual reports.

Introduction trend in social and environmental report-
ing. Subsequently, researchers have
Companies are now becoming more sen- begun to examine the extent of dis-
sitive and aware of their roles and re- closures, including types and nature,
sponsibilities towards the society and form, quality and quantity of informa-
environment, resulting in a growing tion disclosed. Most of these studies

Corresponding author: Ku Nor Izah Ku Ismail, Associate Professor, College of Business, Universiti Utara Malaysia,
Sintok, Kedah, Malaysia, E-mail: norizah@uum.edu.my

K.N.I Ku Ismail, A.H. Ibrahim / Issues in Social and Environmental Accounting 2 (2008/2009) 198-210 199

were carried out in the context of among Jordanian listed companies and
developed countries (see Adams et al., examine if company characteristics
1998; Brown and Deegan, 1998), (namely firm size, industry type and
while only a handful were conducted government ownership) influence the
in developing countries. amount of disclosure.

Corporate social and environmental dis- This study is important because it will
closure (CSED) is a process of commu- also include companies in the service
nicating the social and environmental sector, which previous studies tend to
effects of organizations’ economic ac- ignore. Previously, CSED studies tend to
tions to the society (Gray et al. 1987). In focus on the manufacturing sector. The
the case of Jordan, like any other devel- service sector also plays a significant
oping country, there is a lack of studies role in the Jordanian economy, and con-
on CSED (see for example Abu-Baker stitutes 66 percent of the country’s GDP
and Naser, 2000; Al-Khadash, 2003; (Jordan economic reports 2006). In addi-
Jahamani, 2003). A low level of disclo- tion, only a few studies were carried out
sure was found by these studies, despite in Jordan that investigate the role of
the laws and regulations that mandate ownership structure in influencing the
the Jordanian organizations to disclose level of disclosure, despite the fact that
social and environmental reporting in the Jordanian government holds a major-
their annual reports, such as the Law of ity of companies’ shares in most big
Environmental Protection 1995, and the companies (Naser (1998) cited in Naser
Securities Commission Law of 1998 (Al et al. (2002)). In a developing country
-Khadash, 2003). like Jordan, government ownership of
companies is viewed as a supervising
Over the past several years, the Jorda- mechanism that may influence the qual-
nian economy has improved, with the ity of information disclosed (Nasser et
GDP growing at a rate of 6.2% in 2006 al., 2002).
(Jordan Economic Reports, 2006). In
2006, the Jordanian government has The remaining of this paper is organized
taken a positive economic measure by as follows. In the next section, this paper
significantly reducing its debt-to-GDP provides a review of literature. Next, we
ratio (The 2008 World Fact Book). Cou- present the research methods and hy-
pled with increased political stability, pothesis development. The findings of
this measure would help Jordan become the study will be presented next. Finally,
more attractive to foreign investors. we will provide the conclusions.
Consequently, we expect that there will
be an increased quality of corporate an-
nual reports and thus social and environ- Literature Review
mental reporting reported in the annual
reports. The term corporate social reporting
(CSR) or corporate social disclosure as
Accordingly, this study examines the often been used, has a very broad mean-
current practice of social and environ- ing. Guthrie and Mathews (1985) de-
mental reporting in Jordan. In particular, fined corporate social disclosure as the
this study measures the extent of CSED provision of financial and non-financial

200 K.N.I Ku Ismail, A.H. Ibrahim / Issues in Social and Environmental Accounting 2 (2008/2009) 198-210

information relating to an organization’s information in their annual reports
interaction with its physical and social (Gray, 2001). Countries vary in the types
environment as stated in corporate an- of human resource information they dis-
nual reports or separate social reports. close. Roberts (1990) concludes that
‘Environment’ is one of the most com- European, South African and Australian
mon categories of social disclosure; as companies are more likely than compa-
such, most research has considered envi- nies in other parts of the world to dis-
ronment as a stand-alone category (Tilt, close employment policies, health and
2000), and some others use the term safety information, or have separate sec-
CSED to highlight such significance. tions on employment data. There is also
evidence to suggest that companies
domiciled in a more developed nation is
CSED in Developed Countries likely to report more extensively in the
developed nation than it is to report in
Corporate social and environmental the lesser developed countries in which
reporting issues have received grow- it operates (see, for example, United Na-
ing attention, particularly from re- tions, 1992).
searchers in developed countries
(see for example, Ernst and Ernst, Environmental reporting has a long his-
1978; Patten, 1992; Guthrie and Parker, tory. However, only during the late
1990; Adams et al., 1998, Gray, 2001; 1980s and early 1990s did it become
and Araya, 2006). These studies review widespread in Western Europe (Gray et
the social and environmental disclosure al. 1996). Roberts (1991) provides evi-
policies of entities around the world. dence that the disclosure level for envi-
They provide evidence that there has ronmental information in Germany is
been an improved corporate social higher than in any other European coun-
reporting over the years. Adams et try, in which more than 80 percent of
al. (1998) for example examined the German companies provided at least one
annual reports of six European coun- item of environmental information in
tries (namely the UK, Germany, their annual reports. According to Araya
France, Netherlands, Sweden, and (2006), multinational enterprises from
Switzerland) and found that there was developed countries are the leading pro-
an increased amount of disclosure ducers of environmental reports. During
among all countries especially in the the period from 1990 to 2003, 58 percent of
UK and Germany. all separate environmental reports published
around the world came from Europe, 20
Prior studies also suggest that informa- percent from the Americas (two thirds from
tion related to human resource, as com- the US and one third from Canada and Bra-
pared to that of community involve- zil ), 20 percent from Asia (mainly Japan)
ment and environment issues, was the and Australasia, and only 2 percent from
most common information provided in Africa and the Middle East.
the annual reports (see for example,
Guthrie and Parker, 1990; Roberts,
1990; and Adams et al., 1998) although CSED in Developing Countries
there is an increasing awareness among
companies to disclose environmental Little attention has been given to


CSR issues in developing countries is by Jahamani (2003), which examined
(Al-Khater and Naser, 2003). Lack of the extent of environmental reporting for
regulation was one of the most com- United Arab Emirate companies in 1998.
mon problems that authorities in these The results show that only 12 percent of
countries faced in their efforts to en- the companies in the UAE issued envi-
courage corporations to disclose their ronmental reports.
environmental and social reports (Abu
Shiraz, 1998). Abu Shiraz also argued In Jordan, research on social and envi-
that the shortage of qualified account- ronmental disclosure was limited (Al-
ants in developing countries is part of Khadash, 2003) and is still in the early
the problem because introducing so- stage (Jahamani, 2003). One of the stud-
cial and environmental issues into the ies is by Abu-Baker (2000), who exam-
reporting system requires a combina- ined the extent of CSED of Jordanian
tion of expertise in various fields in- listed companies in 1997. Using a sam-
cluding law, engineering, and sociol- ple of 143 companies chosen from three
ogy. In addition, reporting on social different industry groups
and environmental issues presents ad- (manufacturing, insurance, and bank-
ditional costs (Al-Khater and Naser, ing), he concluded that all companies
2003). Although evidence shows that made some kind of CSR in their annual
the volume of CSED in developing reports. On average, about half of a page
countries increases (Tsang, 1998 and in the annual report is devoted to social
Al-Khater and Naser, 2003), the vol- disclosure. He also found that environ-
ume is still low despite the increas- mental, product and energy reporting
ing awareness of companies to- need a lot of attention and concentration
wards the social and environmental by Jordanian companies. On the other
issues (see Imam, 1999). Like in de- hand, human resources and community
veloped countries, disclosure is involvement were the most themes com-
mainly on human resource (see for monly disclosed across the Jordanian
example Thompson and Zakaria, shareholding companies. In another
2004). Environmental information is study, Al-Khadash (2003), examined the
least likely to be reported (Rahman level of social and environmental disclo-
and Muttakin, 2005). sure in the annual reports of the Indus-
trial Jordanian Shareholding Companies
Within the Arab world, Al-Khater and (IJSCs) over the period 1998 to 2000.
Naser (2003) investigated the percep- He found that 26 percent of the IJSCs
tions of various user groups of Qatar’s did not have social and environmental
corporate reports about different as- disclosure in the annual reports, and the
pects of corporate social responsibility level of social and environmental disclo-
disclosure. The findings show that re- sure in the IJSCs has increased over the
spondents support the idea that compa- period of 1998 to 2000. In addition, the
nies should report some kind of CSR to findings showed significant relationships
justify their existence within the soci- between the company’s size and man-
ety. They felt that the inclusion of agement risk with the level of social and
CSED in annual reports would reflect environmental disclosure. On the other
social responsibility to the public. An- hand, the study did not support any sig-
other study of CSED in the Arab world nificant relationship between financial


performance and the level of social and Industry Type
environmental disclosure. Jahamani It is argued that industry may have an
(2003) who examined the extent, aware- influence on the amount of disclosure.
ness and level of environmental respon- Patten (1991) suggests that the nature of
sibility of Jordanian companies found the industry is a more important factor
that only 10 percent of the companies on social responsibility disclosure. In
issued environmental reports as part of this study, companies are classified into
their annual reports. The amount of in- either manufacturing or services follow-
formation varied from nine pages to a ing the Amman Stock Exchange (ASE)
few paragraphs. The study concluded classification. It is expected that manu-
that the environmental, product and en- facturing companies are more likely to
ergy reporting need a lot of attention and provide more disclosure. This is because
concentration by Jordanian companies. they have greater environmental impacts
on the society than other companies.
Manufacturers are known to be greater
Hypothesis polluters and more visible to the society.
Furthermore, they are expected to influ-
Firm Size ence political visibility (Hackston and
In general, large companies have more Milne, 1998). Thus, manufacturing com-
stakeholders and are thus more visible to panies would disclosure more to reduce
the public than smaller companies. Firth political costs and the pressure from so-
(1979) suggests that firms which are cial activists.
more visible to the public are more
likely to disclose information to enhance Evidence of the association between
their corporate reputation and to reduce industry type and the level of CSED is
political costs. It is also argued that re- provided for example by Halme and
vealing more information allows large Huse (1997) and Hackston and Milne
firms to obtain new funds at lower costs. (1998). The latter found that manufac-
Large firms often possess sufficient re- turing companies with high profit dis-
sources for collecting, analyzing, and close more CSED than non-
presenting extensive amounts of data at manufacturing companies. Abu-Baker
minimal cost. Although evidence on the (2000) found that manufacturing sectors
association between size and CSED is are more likely to disclose information
mixed, expectedly, numerous studies than other sectors (for e.g. service,
found the association to be positive (see banking, and insurance).
for example, Andrew et al., 1989; Ad-
ams, 1998; Hackston and Milne 1998; This leads us to the second hypothesis as
Al-Khadash, 2003 and Alsaeed, 2006;) . follows:
H2: Manufacturing companies disclose
Based on the above arguments and prior more social and environmental informa-
findings, the following hypothesis is tion than service companies.
tested:
H1: There is a positive association be- Government Ownership
tween firm size and the level of social In general, a wider spread in share own-
and environmental disclosure. ership is argued to have a positive im-
pact on the depth of information dis-


closed in the annual reports of listed ways are different from those of the
companies (Fama and Jensen, 1983). In manufacturing and service sectors.
the case of Jordan, the government holds
a significant number of shares in most This study uses ordinary least square
companies (Naser et al., 2002). Huafang (OLS) regression model to examine the
and Jiangu (2007) argued that enhancing influence of the selected firm character-
shareholder value may not be the pri- istics on CSED. The following model is
mary objective of government owner- estimated:
ship. In addition, the government would
also be able to obtain information from CSED = α + b1 SIZE + b2 INDUSTRY
other sources and be more likely to gain + b3 OWNERSHIP + ε
easier access to different channels of Where:
financing than non-government firms CSED = the level of CSED disclosure
(Eng and Mak, 2003). Consequent, we measured by the number of sentences
hypothesize the following: used,
H3: Companies with high government SIZE = size of a company measured by
ownership tend to disclose less informa- total assets,
tion than those with a low government INDUSTRY = “1” if it is a manufactur-
ownership. ing company, and “0” if a service com-
pany,
OWNERSHIP = percentage of govern-
Research Methods ment ownership in a company, and
ε = the error term.
This study examines the level of CSED
in annual reports of Jordanian compa- Content analysis is used to analyze so-
nies for the year 2006. There were 240 cial and environmental reporting in the
companies listed on the Amman Stock annual reports. Number of sentences
Exchange (ASE) as of December 2006 (instead of number of words or number
(112 and 128 companies are listed on the of pages) was used to measure the level
main board and the second board, respec- of CSED. This is because the number of
tively). The companies are classified sentences may be counted with less use
into four major sectors – banking, insur- of judgment. Moreover, the counting of
ance, manufacturing and services com- sentences has been associated with
panies. The focus of this study is on fewer errors compared to the counting of
manufacturing and service companies words (Unerman, 2000, cited by Nik
listed on the main board. There were 44 Ahmad and Sulaiman, 2004)..
service and 41 manufacturing companies
on the main board. However, only 30 Based on the works of Abu-Baker
companies from each of the manufactur- (2000) and Al-Khadash (2003), the so-
ing and service sectors are randomly se- cial and environmental information is
lected and examined. Companies in the classified into three themes - human re-
banking and insurance sectors (14 and source, community involvement, and
13, respectively) are excluded. This is environmental issues. In addition, these
because the accounting and disclosure themes are further broken down into
requirements for the sectors in some thirteen items of information.


Findings and Discussion not have social and environmental dis-
closure in the annual reports. The mean
On the overall, 51 out of the 60 compa- number of sentences used to disclose
nies (or 85 percent) provide some kind social and environmental is 22, the
of information regarding CSED. Nine maximum being 94 sentences. Table 1
other companies provide no disclosure. summarizes the information provided by
This is an improvement if compared to companies according to individual items
Al-Khadash (2003) who found that 26 as well as themes.
percent of the sampled companies did

Table 1
Summary of CSED in Jordanian Companies’ Annual Reports

Disclosure by companies Disclosure by sentences
Theme Number of Percent Number of Percent
companies Sentences
Human resources
Health &safety 27 45.0 87 6.7
Number of employees 51 85.0 197 15.2
Employee training 39 65.0 196 15.1
Incentives level 34 56.7 154 11.8
Employment of disabled 11 18.3 27 2.1
Other services to employees 21 35.0 124 9.5
Sub-total 785 60.4
Community involvement
Donations to community 41 68.3 233 17.9
Public welfare 14 23.3 72 5.5
Other activities 16 26.7 94 7.2
Sub-total 399 30.6
Environmental issues
Environment expenditure 13 21.7 42 3.2
Pollution abatement 5 8.3 14 1.1
Environment preservation 10 16.7 52 4.0
Recycling programs 3 5.0 9 0.7
Sub-total 117 9.0
Grand total 1301 100


Table 2 provides the descriptive statis- mean of 61 million Dinars. With respect
tics of the variables. In terms of firm to ownership structure, the government
size, total assets range from 1.8 million owns between zero to 43.1 percent, with
to 597 million Jordanian Dinars with a a mean of 5.34 percent.

Table 2
Descriptive Statistics
N Min. Max. Mean Std. Deviation
CSED (number of sen-
60 0 94.00 21.68 20.657
tences)
SIZE (Total assets in mil-
lion Jordanian Dinars) 60 1.8 597 61 110
INDUSTRY 60 .00 1.00 .5000 .504
OWNERSHIP 60 .00 43.10% 5.34% 10.34

Table 3 shows the results of Pearson is no multicollinearity problem in the
Correlation between the independent model.
variables. It provides evidence that there

Table 3
Pearson Correlation Coefficients
INDUSTRY OWNERSHIP
SIZE -.051 -.060
(.699) (.650)
INDUSTRY .142
(.278)

Results of the OLS regression is exhib- variables explain 21 percent of the varia-
ited in Table 4. The adjusted R-Square tion in disclosure, and the F-ratio (6.407)
of 0.21 implies that the independent shows that the model is significant.

Table 4
Regression Results - Overall
F-ratio = 6.407 (Sig. F = 0.001) Adjusted R2 = 0.216
Unstandardized Coefficients t Sig.
B Std. Error
(Constant) 16.054 3.765 4.264 .000
SIZE 7.784E-08 .000 3.592 .001***
INDUSTRY 7.069 4.777 1.480 .145
OWNERSHIP -.491 .233 -2.109 .039**
*** Significant at 1 percent ** Significant at 5 percent


There is a significant and positive asso- type and CSED for New Zealand com-
ciation between the level of CSED and panies.
size of a company, which indicates that
larger companies disclose more CSED Table 5 shows the regression results of
compared to smaller companies. There- the effect of the variables on each of the
fore, the results support the first hy- three disclosure themes. The F-values
pothesis and is consistent with previous indicate that the models are significant
studies (see for example, Andrew et al., and the adjusted R2 values show that the
1989; Hackston and Milne, 1998; Ad- independent variables explain 20 per-
ams, 1998; Al-Khadash, 2003; Nik cent, 23 percent and 29 percent of the
Ahmad and Sulaiman, 2004; Rahman variations in environmental, community
and Muttakin, 2005). As discussed ear- involvement and human resource disclo-
lier, large firms are closely watched by sure, respectively. It is evident from the
stakeholders, and they have the ability to table that an industry type and size of a
absorb extra costs for improved disclo- company are associated with disclosure
sure (Alsaeed, 2006). Moreover, larger of environmental issues (at a 10 percent
companies tend to have more sharehold- significant level). Large and manufactur-
ers who might also be concerned with ing companies tend to disclose more
the social and environmental programs information on environmental issues
undertaken by the company. On the than service companies. This is expected
other hand, smaller companies might not as manufacturing companies greatly af-
receive the same level of public pres- fect the environment. Dierkes and Pre-
sure. Smaller companies may tend to ston (1977) contend that companies
communicate information about social whose economic activities modify the
programs through more informal chan- environment, are more likely to disclose
nels than through the annual reports information about their environmental
(Cowen et al., 1987). impacts than are companies in other in-
dustries. Because these companies are
In addition, this study provides evidence more prone to pollution, environmental
that government ownership has a nega- information is disclosed to reduce politi-
tive and significant association with the cal cost and enhance their image. As for
level of social and environmental disclo- human resource and community involve-
sure. Companies listed on the Amman ment, the results resemble the overall
Stock Exchange (ASE) with high gov- results in which size and government
ernment ownership tend to disclose less ownership influence the level of disclo-
CSED than companies with a low gov- sure in the expected direction.
ernment ownership. Likewise, this is
consistent with the study of Huafang and
Jiangu (2007) which found a negative Conclusion
association between state ownership and
the level of voluntary disclosure in The main purpose of this study is to ex-
China. However, there is no significant amine the level of social and environ-
association between industry type and mental reporting in Jordanian companies
the level of CSED. This result is consis- listed on the ASE. In addition, this study
tent with Davey (1982) which failed to determines if firm size, government
find an association between industry ownership and industry type influence


Table 5
Regression Results by Themes
Environmental Issues
Unstandardized Coefficients T Sig.
B Std. Error
(Constant) .598 .824 .726 .471
SIZE 8.478E-09 .000 1.786 .079*
INDUSTRY 2.023 1.046 1.934 .058*
OWNERSHIP -.033 .051 -.638 .526
Community Involvement
(Constant) 5.729 1.583 3.620 .001
SIZE 2.381E-08 .000 2.613 .012**
INDUSTRY 1.171 2.008 .583 .562
OWNERSHIP -.207 .098 -2.118 .039**
Human Resource
(Constant) 9.726 2.118 4.593 .000
SIZE 4.556E-08 .000 3.737 .000***
INDUSTRY 3.875 2.687 1.442 .155
OWNERSHIP -.251 .131 -1.919 .060*
Significant at 10%*, 5 %** and 1%***

the extent of CSED. Results show that Companies that make social and envi-
85% of companies made some kind of ronmental disclosures are generally
social and environmental disclosure with characterized by larger size and less
an average of 22 sentences. This result government ownership. However, the
perhaps is a positive indication of the breakdown analysis provides evidence
development of CSED in Jordanian that manufacturing companies provide
companies. Secondly, the results of the more environmental disclosure than ser-
analysis showed that company size and vice companies do.
the government ownership are associ-
ated with the level of social and environ- This study provides some understanding
mental disclosure. On the other hand, of Jordanian firms’ disclose strategy,
there is no association between social thus enabling the relevant authorities to
and environmental disclosure and indus- be in a better position to supervise the
try type. One possible explanation for disclosure requirement. At the same
the lack of association may be that it is time, this study may encourage the Jor-
rather simplistic to use a binary classifi- danian government to reconsider the
cation for manufacturing and service policy related to social and environ-
companies. The specific type of manu- mental activities especially in firms with
facturing industry may be more appro- high government ownership that have a
priate than the general measure of manu- lower level of CSED. Future research is
facturing. necessary for Jordanian researchers to


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