The Current State of Corporate Social Responsibility Among Industrial Companies in Malaysia

Purpose – The main aim of the study is to find out the level and trend of CSR disclosure pattern of industrial companies in Malaysia and its relationship with companies' characteristics. Design/methodology/approach – Content analysis is used to analyse the data from the corporate annual reports of the companies from 1998 to 2003. Samples are selected using simple random sampling technique. Findings – Research findings, inter alia, indicate that there is positive relationship between CSR and companies' turnover but no apparent relationship is noticed with companies' capital. Relationship between CSR and companies' profitability is also found to be positive but weak. More disclosure by local companies as compared to their foreign counterparts is another noteworthy finding. Overall, CSR level of industrial companies in Malaysia is increasing both in terms of amount of the disclosure and the number of participating companies. Research limitations/implications – The use of annual reports may not give a complete picture of the disclosure practices as the company may use other medium to disseminate the information. In addition, his study focuses on industrial companies in Malaysia. Thus all conclusions derived cannot be generalized to other industries. Originality/value – The current research is the only study in Malaysia thus far that covers a disclosure pattern of six years thereby widens the horizon of CSR research. Besides that it extends the previous research to cover new variables such as individual and corporate ownership, influence of the chairman's race on the disclosure and exploring the disclosure pattern by paid‐up capital.