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Abstract:
Social responsibility has proven
to be a competitive way for companies, simultaneously with other strategies.
Its prominence lies in its multidisciplinary and transversality to various
business, human and sustainable areas. Thus, the aim of this research is to
verify whether national companies are performing better by reporting on their
social responsibility practice at economic and financial level. For this
purpose, 550 questionnaires were applied to national companies, with no values
admitted to listing, based in mainland Portugal, and 344 were validated and
analysed by applying an exploratory study for discussion and presentation of
results. The main considerations indicated that the lack of disclosure of
social, human and environmental information is due to difficulties in
registering accounts, in ascertaining financial values, in inserting them in
traditional reporting charts and in specific rules for working with such
particular intangible elements. The lack of social responsibility reporting
makes these companies less attractive and consequently less performing. The
difficulties of financial reporting are partly overcome by qualitative
information, but there is still a long way to go to make social responsibility
reporting more important for regulators, companies and other stakeholders to
help address the problem of lack of information and to effectively understand
the impact of social responsibility on business performance. However, we can conclude from the information obtained
that the preference of stakeholders is for companies that demonstrate,
implement and demonstrate social responsibility strategies, and with them
leverage their results and together their business performance.
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