The extent to which companies disclose social responsibility, and the impact of the company's characteristics on this (An applied study on the companies listed on the Damascus Stock Exchange)

Abstract

The purpose of the current research is to measure the extent of the disclosure of the (24) companies listed on the Damascus Stock Exchange for social responsibility, and measure the impact of some characteristics of those companies (size, age, type of sector in which they operate, type of auditor ((Big4) or (Non Big4)), its profit, and the presence of women on its board of directors) in its disclosure of social responsibility. To reach the goal of the research, a list was first prepared containing the activities of social responsibility, and then measuring the extent of the disclosures of companies listed on the Damascus Stock Exchange from the data for that list, by collecting the number of disclosures contained in the final financial reports of these companies over the period of time from (2011) to (2016), and after that the characteristics of the companies were extracted from their initial and final financial reports. To test the research hypotheses, several types of tests were used which are mono-variance analysis, simple linear regression test, tracking test and (t) test. The research reached many results, including that the percentage of disclosure of companies listed on the Damascus Stock Exchange for social responsibility is (7.87%), and the size of the company and the type of sector in which it operates and its profit had a positive impact in its disclosure of social responsibility, and the presence of women in the Council The company's management had a negative impact, while the company's age and the type of its auditor had no effect in its disclosure of social responsibility.