Diseño de índices de divulgación de la información de responsabilidad social empresarial y gobierno corporativo

Abstract

The disclosure of information regarding Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Corporate Governance (CG) has been disseminated in both voluntary and mandatory forms since the decade of 1990. The main communication channels are the CSR and sustainability reports, as well as the GC reports and the internet. In the Iberian Peninsula, similarly to several other countries, major enterprises opt for voluntary disclosure, using the international guidelines of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI). For this study, a sample comprising the most relevant enterprises of Portugal and Spain was used in order to accomplish the general goals and specific objectives of this research, namely those listed in the IBEX 35 and PSI 20 during the years of 2007, 2009 and 2011 (totaling 55 enterprises). The proposed general goal comprises the analysis of the CSR disclosure standards and further acknowledgement of its most determinant factors during the period studied, bearing in mind that these were years of economic crisis. According to this general goal, the following specific objectives are proposed: determine the most significant variables during the designated time span of three years, analyze the evolution of the disclosure levels between 2007 and 2011, identify an index of CSR disclosure, another index of CG disclosure and finally a global index that comprises both CSR and CG disclosure indices. The obtained results have shown that the featured enterprises are increasingly disclosing information regarding both CSR and CG, even in times of economic crisis.