**2. What is CSR and CSR reporting?**

In this section, we review literature related to CSR and CSR reporting to highlight the limitations of current CSR reporting which will play an important role in determining the suitability of blockchain technology in CSR reporting.

Having an agreeable definition of CSR is an important step to advance scholarly research which will provide directive guidance to corporates on what they should do (CSR activities), how to measure their progress (CSR performance) and what they should report (CSR reporting) in order to advance social responsibility. There are several attempts to define CSR. According to Carroll [11], the work of Bowen [12] in 1953 has been considered as the "Farther of Corporate Social Responsibility". Bowen [12] defined CSR as the "obligations of businessmen" to do things that are consistent with desirable "objectives and values of our society". This definition has laid down the foundation that corporates must focus on their effects on society rather than focusing only on profit. A work by Johnson [13] further elaborated the parties that corporates are responsible for which includes "employees, suppliers, dealers, local communities, and the nation". This idea has latter become consistent with the stakeholder approach of [14] which postulated that corporates cannot exist without the support from their stakeholders which consist of customers, governments, suppliers, creditors, communities, investors, managers, employees, shareholders, and more. Davis [15] highlighted that responsible corporations are those that accomplish social benefits beyond "the minimum requirements of the law". Eilbirt and Parket [16] is one of a few early works that suggested that CSR is associated with many different types of activities which laid down the foundation for subsequent works that attempt to advance the classification of CSR activities. Carroll [17] defined CSR as "the social responsibility of business encompasses the economic, legal, ethical, and discretionary expectations that society has of organizations at a given point in time".

Still, after years of development, an agreeable definition of CSR has not yet been established. There are four reasons why having a precise and universal definition of CSR can be extremely difficult, if not impossible according to Sheehy [18]. First, there is no universal agreement on what exactly is constituted as "all harms" that are socially irresponsible or "all good deeds" that are socially desirable. Our society might have consensus about "some" of the harms and "some" of the good deeds. But having a precise and universal definition of all harms and all good deeds might be impossible. Furthermore, these harms tend to arise together as components of a basket that consists of things that are socially desirable. For example, producing electricity or driving on the road can damage our environment from their carbon emissions but we (society) need electricity and transportation to further advance our society.

Second, there is no universal agreement on which harms should be addressed (or which good deeds should be promoted) as well as by "how much" they should be addressed. It is still a debatable matter whether all socially undesirable things (assume that we are able to define them) must be addressed or if it is "socially desirable" to address only some of them. For example, there are many production activities that emit carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Which of these activities do we need to address? Do we need to address all of them or only some of them? Furthermore, another question that complicates this issue is how much do we need to address them. Do we aim for absolute zero carbon emission for a specific production activity or some small level of carbon emission?

Third, there is no universal agreement on who should be responsible for addressing each harm (or promoting each good deed). One of the most controversial but extremely influential statements against CSR was from the Nobel laureate Milton Friedman [19]. He argued that the main responsibility of corporates is to produce excellent products and services to deliver the highest return to shareholders. Even though this view (the view that corporates should focus only on pleasing shareholders) has already lost its strength, but the idea that corporates might not be the most efficient agents to address some socially undesirable matters is still very much valid. There could be some matters that should be addressed by governments, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) or nonprofit organizations.

Fourth, there is no universal agreement on who should define CSR. An entity that has the power to define CSR or CSR's agenda will have a great deal of opportunity and power to shape the global business landscape to be whatever this entity desires. These problems in defining CSR will further complicate researchers in their attempt to define and advance CSR reporting.

CSR reporting is an activity of companies that attempt to communicate the impact of their business operations on social and environmental issues to stakeholders [20]. CSR reporting is a subset of non-financial reporting (NFR) which includes integrated reporting, Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) reporting, Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) reporting, Greenhouse Gas (GHG) reporting, and others [21]. Recently, there has been increasing pressure from various stakeholders demanding firms to release information beyond their financial information both on a voluntary as well as on a mandatory basis [22]. Several countries (such as Australia, China, South Africa, United States, and the European Union) have started to require some companies (usually listed companies) to disclose information regarding their social and environmental impact [21].

However, CSR reporting is still in its infancy, especially when compared to financial reporting [23, 24]. Tschopp and Huefner [23] provided a comparative analysis between CSR reporting and financial reporting which can be used to identity several limitations of current CSR reporting. A major issue with current CSR reporting is the lack of comparability of CSR reports as companies have discretion to choose their preferred reporting standards as well as what to be included in their reports [21, 23, 25]. The lack of comparability of CSR reports reduces the value of CSR reports because stakeholders will find it more difficult to use information from CSR reports for decision making. It is important to note that major progress has been made towards resolving this issue by the GRI who created and popularized the GRI standards which are considered the most widely used sustainability reporting standards in the world. According to the Survey of Sustainability Reporting from KPMG [26], 73 percent of the world 250 largest companies use GRI standards. Still, it is evident that this practice is common only for very large companies since, according to the same report, nearly half (46 percent) of the largest 100 firms in 52 countries do not use GRI standards or do not report on their sustainability performance at all. Furthermore, companies tend to use GRI principles only vaguely as well as use them

to report only favourable information [27]. There are several studies that examined and found "greenwashing" which is an attempt that companies use NFR such as CSR reporting to manipulate stakeholders' perception about non-financial activities [22, 27]. Finally, several studies found that weak governance such as small board size, a lower percentage of independent and female directors, and frequency of board meetings is associated with a lower quality of CSR reports [28–32].
