The Impact of Ownership Structures on Corporate Social Responsibility Disclosure in Palestine

Abstract

This study investigates the impact of managerial ownership and blockholder ownership in determining Corporate Social Responsibility Disclosure (CSRD) in Palestinian listed firms. This study is based on panel data of 576 observations from all firms listed on the Palestine Security Exchange during the period from 2009 to 2020. The result reveals that blockholders’ ownership is significant and positively related to CSRD. However, managerial ownership is positive but not significantly related to CSRD. This study measured the CSRD as content analysis for five elements; employees, environment, community, value-added, and product. CSRDL measured as a number of words identified in each item were utilized to capture the nature of disclosure made in each of the five issues. The few studies in Palestine and the mixed results in the prior studies in developed countries make it necessary to study the impact of ownership structures on CSRD in Palestine, in order to enrich the previous literature.