Literature review and theoretical framework
Jieqi Guan, Carlos Noronha · 2017
SAR initially appeared in the early 1970s when researches of reporting in relation to employees and products were conducted. In the 1980s, this topic was largely replaced by a growing number of studies about the “how” and the “impact” of accounting in reporting CSR information. In the late 1990s, environmental topics made a significant contribution to the social accounting literature ( Aerts and Cormier, 2009 ; Cormier et al., 2005 ; Al-Tuwaijri et al., 2004 ; Bewley and Li, 2000 ). Discussions on environmental disclosures also appeared in many empirical studies during the same period ( Gray et al., 1995 ; Hackston and Milne, 1996 ; Deegan and Rankin, 1996 ; Bebbington et al., 1999 ). In particular, the increasing number of studies in this topic has driven “the development of several frameworks and models to guide professionals in their approaches to environmental auditing and accounting” ( Mathews, 1997 , p. 496). A growing attention by the international community to CSR reporting began to appear at the start of the new millennium. Various issues such as those in relation to the dimensions and the levels of social disclosure and their determinants as well as managerial and stakeholder perceptions have been published ( Belal and Momin, 2009 ). A number of them have investigated the evolution and achievements of SAR studies in developed countries through literature review (e.g., Alcañiz et al., 2010 ; Burritt and Schaltegger, 2010 ; Deegan and Soltys, 2007 ; Eugénio et al., 2010 ; Gray, 2002 ; Owen, 2008 ; Parker, 2005 ). However, there has been a lack of CSR information in developing countries, as the SAR literature mainly focuses on developed regions ( Belal and Momin, 2009 ).