15 A Comparison of Corporate Social Responsibility Reporting in the United States, Germany and Australia Stephen Chen and Petra Bouvain Introduction Corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting is not mandatory in most countries, but has been adopted by many large companies from around the world.The terms corporate social responsibility, global citizenship and sustainability can now be found in the corporate reports and websites of large and small corporations from around the world. However, consider- able variation exists among firms worldwide. While some companies (e.g. Henkel, BHP, Johnson and Johnson)have a long-standing tradition in report- ing information and have created separate internet sites to show all facets of their corporate responsibility and sustainability , other companies provide only limited information, in many cases related to corporate giving and sponsorship, or in some cases no information at all. CSR reporting and corporate governance are obviously related since corpo- rate reporting is both an input to and a product of the corporate governance process (Bebbington, 2004). It could also be argued, taking a social construc- tionist perspective, that CSR reporting is a means of influencing how others view and see the corporation and corporate governance issues (Parker, 2007). To the extent that one observes differences in corporate governance, one would, therefore, also expect to observe differences in CSR reporting. This argument does seem to be borne out by the few studies that have exam- ined this issue. For instance, Aguilera and Cuervo-Cazurra (2004) contrast CSR reporting in the United States and the United Kingdom and argue that national differences in CSR can be related to differences in corporate gov- ernance systems. Because business organizations are embedded in different national business systems and different corporate governance systems, they will experience divergent degrees of internal and external pressures to engage in social responsibility initiatives (Logsdon and Wood, 2005; Matten and Crane, 2005). 266 R. Strange et al. (eds.), Corporate Governance and International Business © Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited 2008