How Accountants Perceive and Construe the Intention to Disclose Social Responsibility Information: A Study of Kenyan Companies

Abstract

This study which was exploratory in nature was aimed at examining the perception, constructs and intentions of accountants to disclose social responsibility information. Disclosure indices were used to determine the current Corporate Social Disclosures (CSD) practices of listed companies in Kenya and to classify companies as high disclosure companies and low disclosure companies, while repertory grid technique was used determine how accountants perceive and construe intention to disclose CSD. Interviews were conducted with accountants from both high disclosure and low disclosure companies. The repertory grid data were analysed in two stages: individual cases analysis and cross-cases analysis. The individual case were analysed using the principal component analysis. For the cross-cases analysis, content analysis was used to categorize constructs based on their expressed meaning. It was found that the reputation of the company is the main motivation for high disclosure companies to disclose social responsibility information and institutional factors were the main motivation for low disclosure companies. It is recommended that regulation and standardisation of CSD can make it more useful for decision-making by various stakeholders.

Key words: Corporate Social Disclosure, Repertory grid, Legitimacy theory, Stakeholder theory.