Chapter 1: Introduction
1.1 Introduction
With the development of commercial and development banks along with other financial corporations during the last decade, CSR has become a well-known issue concerned by scholars, entrepreneurs and government in Nepal. It is considered as one of the important research topics. Not only this topic has received academic attention but it is also becoming a mainstream issue and regarded as a most prevalent topic for many organizations [1]. As Nepal is a developing country, it has started to encourage listed companies to issue CSR reports since 2006, which is relatively later than with foreign countries. CSR is relatively a very new concept for a country like Nepal. Nepal is facing a number of issues towards economic development. CSR in Nepal is progressively becoming a priority as it is considered as one of the most important factors to contribute to economic development and nation’s growth because it is accepted as an effective concept for corporation to help in solving social problems and strengthen their core business activities [2]. In order to achieve better results and higher profit margins, organizations are trying to flourish and adapt to the various challenges and emerging business tools they encounter in today’s competitive environment by improving their organizational performance.
A few of the hot issues in recent years are related to the lack of corporate social responsibility in Nepal. A significant gap exists in our understanding of what explains the varying responses of organization to social issues in emerging markets. Arguably, in a setting where both performance and regulations and norms of CSR disclosures are underdeveloped, it is more difficult for corporations to take actions beyond those that serve their immediate economic performance. Many organizations or institutions worldwide strongly emphasize that firms must take into consideration the economic, social and environmental effects of their activities [3]. CSRD is a process which provides information about interactions between organizations/firms with regard to environment, employees, and society and customer issues [4]. CSR disclosure includes all information about enterprise economic, social and environmental behavior which effects the organizational actions.
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1.2 Background
In the beginning of industrial era, corporate social responsibility (CSR) was practiced in different forms, such as charity, donation, employee empowerment, community involvement, religious activities and cultural activities. While such traditional practices are common in most countries of the world, modern CSR practices first emerged in the United States. The concept of corporate social responsibility was first proposed by British scholar Oliver Sheldon in 1924. Then in the 1960s, the United States first included it into compulsory supervision to regulate the corporate social responsibility disclosure through policies and regulations, and then many western countries introduced relevant policies and regulations to promote its development. Thus, CSR practices in developed countries like the USA and European countries are supported by government and laws that make CSR much more important and effective than in developing countries. In Nepal, the concept of corporate social responsibility has developed relatively late, and its attention has been raised in recent years. In 1953, Bowen had defined CSR as a social obligation to pursue policies, make decisions, and follow lines of action that were desirable regarding the objectives and values of society [173]. Carroll has described Bowen as the modern ‘‘Father of Corporate Social Responsibility’’, whose study marked the beginning of the modern literature on CSR [18]. It is difficult to find a single commonly accepted definition of CSR. For the purpose of this study, CSR defined by the World Bank gives the clear understanding of CSR in the financial sector of developing countries.
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Chapter 2: Literature Review
2.1 Concept Definition
2.1.1 Definition of Top Management Team (TMT)
Theoretically, the definition of TMT is defined as “dominant coalition”, a group of senior managers whose decisions, choices and actions have a significant impact on firm [25]. Conventionally, TMTs refer to group of top hierarchical level managers, as specified by their formal position or title (e.g. CEO, CFO, and Senior Vice President, etc.). It is expected that top executives of any organization have significant impact on decisions that are strategic in nature. Also, these TMT members are assumed to be responsible for the strategy formulation and strategy implementation. They are responsible for the whole enterprise. Executives should not only monitor the enterprise, but also organize and set short-term and long-term goals. For the increasingly competitive market environment such management team is needed to solve the complex problems faced by enterprises and severe tests, which will be able to achieve the greatest degree of success. As there are still great differences in corporate governance systems in different countries, the definition of TMT by scholars in different countries is also different. However, as far as corporate enterprises and management systems are concerned, top managers are composed of many management levels. Management teams are defined as managers who are at the top level of the enterprise, formulate and implement various strategies, control the operation and management activities of the enterprise, and assume overall coordination and organizational responsibility. Although this concept has been widely accepted by academia but there are still some controversies about which levels should belong to the top management team.
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2.2 Literature Review
2.2.1 Research on Corporate Social Responsibility
The basic idea of CSR is that business and society are linked rather than separate entities [30]. Most of the research on CSR have targeted to identify the mechanisms of CSR and how it relates to increasing competitive advantages. For instance, several scholars have tried to identify the influence of social responsibility on various stakeholders, such as employees, society, and consumers. Some studies have examined how an organization’s CSR activities affect its incomes (e.g. [31]) have debated that CSR increases sales and reduces costs [32]. Several researchers’ attention is increasing on the strategic implications of CSR dealing with the relationships among social responsibility, corporate strategy, and competitive advantage. CSR can be viewed as a fundamental element of an organizational product differentiation/image/reputation building strategies [33]. A study found by Adams (2002) [34] state that CSR disclosure especially on social and environmental aspects improves the corporate image and relationships with stakeholders. Menassa (2010) [36] studied the quality of CSR disclosures in commercial banks of Lebanese in a relationship with factors such as size, age and performance and found that CSR is one of the best means to communicate with their stakeholders [36]. According to prior researches, corporate social responsibility (CSR) is considered as an effective business strategy to minimize uncertainty by serving the benefit of stakeholders.#p#分页标题#e#
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CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH FRAMEWORK AND HYPOTHESES DEVELOPMENT ................................... 33
3.1 INTRODUCTION ...................................... 33
3.2 RESEARCH FRAMEWORK ............................... 33
CHAPTER 4: RESEARCH METHODS ............................................... 49
4.1 INTRODUCTION ......................................... 49
4.2 STUDY POPULATION AND SAMPLE SIZE ....................... 49
CHAPTER 5: RESULTS .................................. 65
5.1 INTRODUCTION ................................... 65
5.2 DESCRIPTIVE STATISTICS ............................... 65
Chapter 5: Results
5.1 Introduction
The overall objective of this research is to understand how the TMT heterogeneity plays as a pivotal factor in influencing CSR disclosure and financial performance as well as to find current status of CSR disclosure in Nepalese banks. The method of regression analysis used to test the hypotheses were introduced in chapter four. This chapter discusses about the results obtained from multivariate data analysis technique as described in earlier chapter. Section 5.2 discusses the descriptive statistics of the study. Section 5.3 discusses the correlation analysis of the study. In section 5.4 the multiple regression analysis is explained. In Section 5.5 the robustness test is carried out to enhance the persuasiveness of the research results. Finally, Section 5.6 concludes the chapter with the conclusion.
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Chapter 6 Conclusion implications, limitations and future research directions
6.1 Introduction
reference(omitted)
