The Relationship between Corporate Social Responsibility and Financial Statements Comparability with an Emphasis on the Role of Institutional Ownership

Comparability is a basic characteristic of financial statements that enables users to identify similarities in and differences between two sets of economic phenomena. Given that comparability is different from other qualitative characteristics of financial statements, doubt remains whether the existing evidence between corporate social responsibility and financial reporting quality continues to persist in the context of financial statements comparability. Positive corporate social responsibility performance reflects managers' ethics and integrity from the stakeholder theory perspective. On this basis, firms with positive corporate social responsibility performance have high compliance incentives to adhere to accounting standards and tend to provide comparable financial statements. The main aim of this study is to determine the relationship between corporate social responsibility performance and financial statements comparability, with an emphasis on the role of institutional ownership among Tehran Stock Exchange (TSE) listed companies using a statistical sample of 185 firms for the period of 2011-2020.

In this study, the comparability of financial statements is measured based on a Babaei et al (2021) empirical methodology based on relative valuation theory and corporate social responsibility performance is also measured from the model of El Ghoul etal. (2011) with the approach of Wang etal. (2020). In this study, multiple regression and Kramer Z test have been used to test the research hypotheses. 

The results of this study show that the financial statements comparability significantly increases by enhancing positive corporate social responsibility performance, and also this positive relation is more intense for high institutional ownership firms. The findings also show a negative relationship between inferior adverse social responsibility performance and financial statements comparability, and also this negative relation is more intense for high institutional ownership firms. Also, the results of the research have been confirmed by using the De Franco et al (2011) measurement model of the financial statements comparability in the robustness tests of the findings.

This study adds to the accounting literature by identifying the determinants of financial statements comparability. In summary, our findings are consistent with the notion that firms with positive corporate social responsibility performance (adverse corporate social responsibility performance) tend to have high (minimal) compliance incentives to adhere to accounting standards and are less (often) involved in managerial opportunistic activities, thereby resulting in high (low) financial statements comparability. Also, institutional owners, as one of the most important mechanisms of corporate governance, strengthens the relationship between corporate social responsibility and financial statements comparability. Positive corporate social responsibility performance can also establish or maintain a positive reputation for firms and prevent them from engaging in reputation-damaging activities.