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emerging economies such as adjusting their social responsibility
activities to the context-specific conditions they operate in. The same
study concludes that company actions are shaped dominantly by
institutional demands or pressures rather than what areas need more
action in reality. 28
In local accounts, studies on the Saudi CSR context, beyond
journalistic reporting, are also limited. Few researchers have picked up
on the social responsibility dimension directly or indirectly. 29
Interestingly, the first local study on Saudi CSR is from 1988, long
before CSR gaining global attention. 30 The study sample included 110
companies in Saudi Arabia and was based on a survey covering many
variables including many of today’s issues such as environmental
protection. The study concludes that companies' social responsibility
activities fall short of expectations and are mostly cosmetic. Results
also indicated that profit is the most important goal for business
organisations. Another study on the social responsiveness of Saudi
managers by Graitem et al. (1990) 31 reinforced the previous results.
Saudi managers felt that social objectives are less important than
economic objectives and that the burden of social responsibility must
be borne by Government. To what extent these attitudes are still
prevalent is subject to debate in light of this study’s findings.
Saudi Companies
Reporting
Public knowledge about companies’ environmental and social impacts
and activities rely to a great extent on the companies’ voluntary
disclosure of relevant information. In the last 10 years, and mainly
among companies in developed economies, the disclosed message
was packaged under different names including environmental reporting,
sustainability reporting, corporate citizenship, and increasingly under
the name of CSR reporting. These reports are often published as
stand- alone documents, part of the company annual report, or
increasingly as sections within the company internet pages.
This public information now constitutes an important part in assessing
and evaluating companies’ environmental and social responsiveness
by various stakeholders including consumers, environmental NGOs,
investors and public authorities. The figure under shows the percentage
of voluntary reporting among the top 100 companies within selected
economies. The practice has been strongest amongst European and
Japanese companies, but recently it has spread to many emerging
economies including China, India, Brazil, and South Africa.
Driving this process is also the proliferation of rating and ranking of
companies’ environmental and social responsiveness. 33 Some of these
ratings are used in international comparisons, but mostly targeting
companies in developed economies. An example is the Dow Jones
20 Tamkeen 2007