Corporate Social Responsibility of Islamic Financial Institutions: The Case of GCC Countries

Abstract

During the last three decades, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has grown significantly both in practice and academic fronts (Hassan and Latiff, 2009; Hassan and Harahap, 2010). However, according to Naylor (1999) CSR is defined as “the obligation of the managers to choose and act in ways that benefit both the interests of the organization and those of the society as a whole” (p.8). The core principle of Islamic Corporate Social Responsibility drives from the Holy Quran, where it stated the significant of social justice, paying Zakat (religion tax), Qardul Hassan, engagement only in permissible activities and the concept of Brotherhood and Sisterhood (Farook, 2007; Hassan and Latiff, 2009). The main purpose of this research is to examine CSR activities of IFIs in the Gulf Corporation Council (GCC) countries and its disclosure. This in turn, leads to employ a Disclosure Index (DI) methodology to investigate the phenomena that being addressed. The DI includes 9 categories and 91 items. The average CSRD of all IFIs in the sample in 2010 was 0.50, however, in the next two years (2011 and 2012) reached to 0.53. The dimension of GG has the highest CSRD by 0.60; the second and the third highest closely goes for the IV and SSB categories by 0.59 and 0.58. Whereas the dimensions of community, others and Charity and Zakah have the lowest rate of disclosure by 0.33, 0.43 and 0.48 respectively.