دانلود رایگان مقاله انگلیسی تضمین کیفیت مسئولیت اجتماعی و کیفیت گزارشگری - الزویر 2018

ABSTRACT

Previous research has shown that obtaining independent assurance of corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting has capital market benefits and that these benefits are amplified when accountants provide the assurance. Yet, little is known about whether and the manner in which CSR assurance improves the quality of CSR reporting, and whether accounting providers improve reporting quality to a greater extent than non-accounting providers. This study uses the unique setting of CSR restatements to examine these issues. We present theoretical and empirical evidence supporting a competitive advantage of using accounting firms as assurance providers as they not only identify inaccuracies in previous reports earlier than non-accounting providers, but also prevent future reporting inaccuracies. CSR assurance, from either type of provider, also leads to improved reporting definitions, scopes, and methodologies that require restatements for comparability. Results also indicate that CSR reporting frameworks (e.g., GRI) are not a substitute for obtaining CSR assurance as the latter has incremental benefits over GRI usage in terms of identifying errors and reporting improvements. These results have implications for public policy makers considering the merits of mandating CSR assurance and for organizations assessing the relative benefits and costs of preparing GRI-based CSR reports, obtaining CSR assurance, and choosing between accounting vs. non-accounting CSR assurance providers.

 Conclusion

In this paper, we use the unique setting of CSR restatements to provide evidence on (1) whether CSR assurance improves CSR reporting quality, and if so, in what manner and (2) whether accounting providers improve CSR reporting quality to a greater extent than non-accounting providers. Results indicate that CSR assurance improves CSR reporting quality by identifying inaccuracies in prior reports and improvements to definitions, scopes, and methodologies that require restatements for comparability. As predicted, such quality improvements are increased when provided by accounting firms. In fact, results suggest that accounting providers are not only more likely to identify reporting inaccuracies, but do so in a timelier manner and prevent future inaccuracies. Results also indicate that CSR reporting frameworks (e.g., GRI) are not a substitute for obtaining CSR assurance in terms of improving reporting quality. More specifically, this finding suggests that while adopting GRI reporting standards helps enhance CSR reporting quality through prompting non-error CSR restatements, it does not appear to have the same impact on error discovery and correction as assurance-related activities. These results extend previous research documenting capital market benefits of CSR assurance (Pflugrath et al., 2011; Casey and Grenier, 2015; Cheng et al., 2015) and are inconsistent with previous extreme criticisms of CSR assurance (see Section 1).