Disclosure and firm ranking based on the the Vigeo model of social responsibility and its relationship with financial performance criteria

The excessive attention of various institutions on the world of business to social responsibility has made it a necessary element for the success of companies. Due to the lack of firm ranking in this field, as well as experimental research and studies on its relationship with financial performance criteria, it is not yet fully defined in the literature and the results are different, therefore, in this paper, an attempt has been made to explain the disclosure and ranking of companies based on the Vigeo model of social responsibility and its relationship with the financial performance criteria of 118 companies during the years 2008 to 2018. To measure the social responsibility indicators of the Vigeo model, content analysis method and indicators such as return on assets, return on equity, return on invested capital, return on sales and Tobin’s Q were used as criteria for financial performance. The results indicate that the highest disclosure of indicators in the corporate governance dimension and the lowest in the human rights dimension and in general, the level of disclosure of indicators in sample companies is very low. Also, our findings show that the responsibility of companies based on Vigeo's social responsibility is positively related to the variable of return on assets, return on sales and return on invested capital and negatively on the return on equity and Tobin’s Q. Among the performance criteria, return on assets were the highest and Tobin’s Q had the lowest correlation with the corporate social responsibility of the Vigeo model.