Motivations for Issuing Standalone CSR Reports: a Survey of Canadian Firms

The purpose of our research was to provide insight into the companies’ motivations to issue or not issue voluntary standalone CSR reports in the Canadian context. We realized a questionnaire survey that asked Canadian companies why they do or do not issue standalone CSR reports, what their motivations and costs are, and the extent to which they comply with GRI guidelines. Our results show that larger firms issue standalone CSR reports. As larger firms have more political visibility and are subject to greater external scrutiny than smaller firms (Watts and Zimmerman, 1986), our findings indicate that firms primarily issue standalone CSR reports in response to external scrutiny by stakeholders, which is consistent with a stakeholder perspective. Our survey also identifies that ancillary motivations for Canadian firms for issuing standalone CSR reports are consistent with legitimacy and signalling perspectives. We acknowledge that the generalizability of our findings is limited due to the sample being situated within a single national context. The inferences drawn from such a sample in Canada may not be applicable to other countries with different national institutional contexts. In addition, the small size of our sample may limit the generalizability of our findings. We also did not specifically consider the quality of the CSR reports in our study. Finally, our work may be affected by the inherent weaknesses associated with survey research, including the inherent bias of the individuals responding to our survey.