| Summary: | Corporate Social Responsibility has been defined as the responsibility towards stakeholders and the society in whole and the expression was founded in the 1950´s. Reporting in corporate social responsibility has been termed corporate social disclosure and has been divided into three areas: environment, ethics and human resources. The aim of this study is to explain variations in corporate social disclosure and the different media used by corporations to communicate these disclosures. A survey was conducted, which included all Swedish corporations listed on the Stockholm Stock Exchange, and all public-owned corporations. The results show that corporate characteristics such as size, industry and profitability can explain some of the variation in social disclosures and also have an effect on the extent and variation of the media used. Public-owned corporations tend to disclose more and use a larger number of channels for their communication. The study also shows that internal factors such as attitudes towards stakeholders and motivation for disclosing have an explanatory power on variations both in disclosures and the use of different channels of communication.
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