Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate multinational corporations' (MNCs) voluntary practice of including corporate social and environmental disclosure (CSED) on their web sites and characteristics that inspire MNCs to be more accountable in this regard. Design/methodology/approach – This study adopts discrimination analysis to test six hypotheses to determine which variables influence the MNCs to post their CSED on the web sites. Data from a sample of 49 MNCs were analyzed with STATISTICA. The independent variables tested include log of total assets (size) and log of total equity (size), return on assets (profitability), debt ratio (risk), auditor (Big4 and non-Big4), country effect (origin the USA or non-USA) and industry effect (manufacturing versus services). Findings – The results show that companies with a strong equity base and in a good financial condition have a propensity to voluntarily disclose more environmental information. For social disclosure, company size and the profitability discriminate the most. MNCs disclose a number of items pertaining to the two areas. These results are in line with evidence found in some prior studies. Research limitations/implications – This study has its limitations. First, the results would be more conclusive if more companies had been included in the sample. Second, only six variables are tested and there may be scope for explaining the extent of the internet disclosure using other variables. Third, this research does not look into the quality of CSRD. Practical implications – This study provides an empirical analysis of practices and characteristics of MNCs relating to CSRD on their web sites. The findings from this study help understand MNCs' corporate behavior in terms of CSED. Originality/value – This study has, for the first time, included three more variables (financial risk, profitability, and country effect) to investigate the disclosure of social and environmental information by MNCs through their web sites, on which there is limited evidence.

Examines budget planning; implementation and performance evaluation practices by utilizing a questionnaire survey of 54 medium and large sized companies located in Bahrain. Most of the companies prepare long‐range plans and operating budgets, and they follow a definite budget procedure and implementation methodology. Uses budget variances to measure a manager’s ability, for timely recognition of problems, and to improve the next period’s budget. While both the listed and non‐listed companies have reported many similar budget practices, the main differences were specific purposes served by budgets, degree of budget participation, periodicity of variance reporting, and purposes and authority to evaluate budget variance reports. In certain cases, firm size influences budgeting practices. Contributes toward filling a gap in the literature on the use of budgets as a planning and control tool in developing countries. Most prior studies were mainly confined to advanced countries. The study findings suggest the need for research on attitudes held by the budgetees towards the use of budget variances in the context of advanced management accounting techniques.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the factors influencing the level of environmental disclosure information from a sample of 45 Indian industrial listed companies in their websites. In order to explain the reasons for the disclosure of environmental information by the companies, legitimacy theory is applied in this paper. The evidence shows that there is a tendency to disclose the environmental protection information but the level of disclosures is still low. Multiple regression analysis shows a positive association between size, and industry type with the disclosure index. Large sized firms, which are heavily polluted, tend to disclose higher level of information. However, profitability and financial leverage have no impact on the disclosure level. The study's findings help understand Indian industrial listed firms' behaviour in terms of environmental disclosure.