Corporate social responsibility practices of companies: a comparison made between the companies in Turkey and Europe according to their disclosures through the websites

Corporate Social Responsibility became a prominent phrase of both academic and business literature since realizing the positive and negative effects of companies on society was undeniable. The phrase was altered to many other terms as ?corporate social responsiveness? or ?stakeholder management? and nowadays, in the globalized business world, the term of ?corporate citizenship? preceded other terms in the literature. As the concept highlighted, companies were expected to behave responsibly and have strong relationships with the stakeholders. Beside the society?s demands, companies were also expected to be transparent to society by disclosing their activities through diverse communication channels.The research was aimed to investigate to what extent the companies disclose their social responsible practices and how much Turkey noticed social responsibility comparing to Europe. Companies? websites as a communication tool were determined as the indicator of the research considering broad range of internet usage and only the practices disclosed through the websites were considered. Two countries? financially successful top 100 companies were compared. The results emphasized that Europe were more seriously considering of being socially responsible than Turkey. The findings mainly highlighted deficiencies of Turkey in socially responsible practices and have been a preliminary research for further investigations to improve the practices.Keywords: Corporate Social Responsibility, Corporate Citizenship, Turkey, Europe, Website, Internet