Corporate social and environmental reporting in developing countries: The case of Argentina

“Corporate Social Reporting” (CSR) communicates actions regarding Corporate Social Responsibility to different stakeholders (Gray, Kouhy, & Lavers, 1995). Some studies conducted in the context of developed countries (Adams, Hill, & Roberts, 1995; O’ Dwyer, 2002; Solomon & Lewis, 2002) argue that incentives should be encouraged to force companies to disclosure its information. However, only few papers have discussed this issue in the developing world context (Belal, 2000; Pedwell, 2004). This paper analyses some Argentinian companies’ Sustainability Reports together with its financial statements. In a country such as Argentina, where the accomplishment of the general regulations could be qualified as “low”, there is no incentive to report actions regarding Corporate Social Responsibility. There is a wide spread agreement within the literature that, in developed countries, governments’ regulations of information disclosure can be effectively enforced. This work shows that the legal context in Argentina does not compel companies that operate only in the domestic market to CSR, however, due to developed world legal regulations some of the exporters report their actions.