An examination of corporate social disclosures of multinational corporations: A cross-national investigation

We examine cross-national differences in corporate social disclosure (CSD) using a sample of 136 multinational corporations from the US, Continental Europe, and Scandinavia. Despite international market pressures to disclose higher levels of information, we find that CSD varies systematically across business cultures. Additionally, CSD is higher in business cultures that are more stakeholder rather than stockholder-oriented. Our findings provide support for business culture as an important influencing factor on the disclosure of corporate social information for multinational corporations.