The impact of country-level institutional differences on CSR disclosure engagement

The main purpose of the current paper is to examine the impact of country-level corporate governance (CG) and legal system, on corporate social responsibility disclosure (CSRD) engagement. Our analysis tends to evaluate to which extent they have endured the global financial crisis (GFC), as reflected in the CSR disclosure of listed firms. The present study explores whether CSRD practices are similar or different in organizations from six countries and two different continents corresponding to two different legal systems, corporate governance systems, and accounting models. These factors, amongst others, may influence the disclosure policy of CSR information. Our results uncovered that a CSR transparency-increasing effect of country-level corporate governance is more pronounced for firms in the Anglo-American legal and regulatory environment, and less pronounced for firms in Euro-Continental institutional environment.