Assignment Task:

'Given the stakeholder requirement for balanced corporate reporting and the need toensure the completeness and integrity of social and environmental disclosures, it issuggested that corporate social responsibility (hereafter CSR) disclosures be verified. It is argued that CSR assurance may improve report credibility and raise stakeholder confidence in the information provided' (Extracted from Corporate social responsibility assurance:how do South African publicly listedcompanies compareMeditari Accountancy Research Vol. 17 No. 2 2009).

You are required to:

• Describe and analyze the current practice of CSR assurance worldwide. Some examples of aspects to be discussed could include, but SHOLD NOT limited to: CSR assurance regulations, CSR assurance providers, CSR assurance objective, CSR assurance framework.
• Analyze and discuss why some firms voluntarily have their CSR reports assured in the context of stakeholder theory, positive accounting theory, legitimize theory, and institutional theory and/or other relevant theories (whichever theory/theories you consider relevant for the analysis).

Your arguments and analysis for the requirement above have to be supported by relevant academic refereed articles (at least 6). You should provide evidence that you have carefully examined the literature, understand it, and have been able to summarize its essential content by integrating these articles into your own arguments and perspective.

Words Limit: 3000 Excluding references.