Regulation, Ownership Structure and Quality of Corporate Social Responsibility Disclosure

The objective of this study is to investigate whether regulation is an effective mechanism to promote quality of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) disclosure. The study also considers the determinants of CSR disclosure quality from agency theory perspective. The research approach involves content analysis of annual reports of 125 Malaysian public listed companies for 2006 and 2007. This study finds that regulatory efforts are important mechanisms in promoting quality of CSR disclosure. However, the overall quality of CSR disclosure is still low. The findings also reveal that government owners place importance on quality of CSR disclosure while family owned companies are not coerced by the regulatory efforts to do so.