Influence of profitability on responsibility accounting disclosure – Empirical study of Vietnamese listed commercial banks

Corporate social responsibility is the development trend in globalization. Businesses need to be accountable to shareholders. An organization should handle the relationship between community, economic, and social factors. The disclosure of responsibility accounting information by businesses has important implications for information users as well as stakeholders. The paper is intended to verify the influence of profitability on the disclosure of responsibility accounting of all listed commercial banks in Vietnam. The paper employs time series data for 2015–2019 and uses the ordinary least square method to test the model. Five independent variables related to profitability are examined. The results of the study show that ROA and ROE have a positive influence on responsibility accounting disclosure. Thereby, the state agencies of Vietnam need to promulgate regulations of responsibility accounting disclosure according to international standards and strictly control the disclosure of Vietnamese commercial banks to improve the quality of the information in the context of international integration.


INTRODUCTION
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a subject of special attention and is of greater importance in the context of economic globalization. It shows the role and responsibility of the business to the economy, community, and society. The business must reconcile the benefit of the related parties. It is an indispensable trend that shows a long-term and sustainable business strategy. Abeysinghe and Basnayake (2015) said that the interest of stakeholders has driven the increase in CSR of enterprises through annual reports. Information disclosure ensures transparency and appropriateness in environmental, social, humanitarian, and ethical issues. It is an action that shows the responsibility of the business to the community. Matuszak and Różańska (2017) recognized that enterprises need to have long-term business strategies and these strategies must ensure community benefits. The improvement of the living environment and social responsibility will create a reputation and enhance competitive value. Therefore, profitability always has a connection with responsibility accounting disclosure (ADISC). Gallardo-Vázquez et al. (2019) examined the need for ethical values of the business in demonstrating its responsibility to society and the community. ADISC is the image of the business shown to the outside, and stakeholders will check that. Therefore, the economic growth of a business must be in the context of the community. Sustainable finance is a combination of economic growth, economic, social, and environmental benefits. It shows that the business invests responsibly with a sustainable business strategy, the standard of social and environmental risk management. Therefore, ADISC is a message to all stakeholders (Kustono & Nanggala, 2019). The role of the banking industry must ensure national financial stability and is also seen as the mainstay leading the economy. Therefore, the ADISC of banks needs to be included in annual reports. Under the pressure of economic growth, CSR needs to be maintained and promoted to ensure community and society. It creates spillovers in the economy to maintain sustainable development (Szegedi et al., 2020).
In the development process, Vietnam has been under great pressure to resolve the relationship between economic development and CSR. Many foreign companies invest in Vietnam in a number of heavy industries. While some legal regulations are not yet strict, the environment, community, and social issues have not been given adequate attention. This issue has been alarming recently through a number of cases of greenhouse gas emissions, direct hazardous waste emissions into the environment, labor policy, and employee welfare. Summarizing over the past 10 years, businesses violated the cases of law violations on the environment, natural resources, and food safety from 2006 to 2016 (Vietnamese Ministry of Public Security, 2016). It is a warning issue about CSR in Vietnam. Business managers are concerned about profitability and economic growth, but do not pay much attention to CSR (Ta & Bui, 2018, Nguyen et al., 2020. Recently, in order to maintain CSR, Vietnam has revised the legal provisions on the Law on Environmental Protection related to environmental, community, and social issues (National Assembly of Vietnam, 2014). For listed businesses like listed commercial banks, Circular 155 regulated ADISC on the securities market (Vietnamese Ministry of Finance, 2015). In Vietnam, research on the ADISC of the banking sector is limited. According to experts from the Central bank of Vietnam, these are the subjects most likely to meet ADISC requirements. The article selects data in the annual reports of these banks for the most recent 5 years. It is the period when the newly revised legal regulations of the Law on environmental protection (2014) and Circular 155 regulate the presentation of ADISC in 2015.

LITERATURE REVIEW
Currently, there are many concepts related to CSR in different aspects. Bowen (1953) considered that CSR is a commitment to ethical issues to ensure the growth of enterprises on the basis of harmony with the economy, community, and society. Carroll (1979Carroll ( , 1991Carroll ( , 1999 recognized that CSR is a core responsibility that businesses must commit to performing in the course of doing business. Commitments to fairness among stakeholders include economic, legal, ethical, and discretionary. Gray et al. (1996) examined ADISC to be the communication process for relevant interest groups in society. ADISC reflects the corporate image externally, and it will influence the value of the company. Most companies have ADISC but they must maintain and ensure community, as well as society, in the process of doing business. Heal (2005) argued that CSR is the participation of various actions to avoid conflicts of interest between parties. It shows that good ADISC will help reduce risks, improve relationships with regulators, cre-ate brand value, and improve human relationships. Starks (2009) said that ADISC is a commitment of an enterprise to create sustainable development for workers, local communities, and society in general. Han et al. (2016) believed that ADISC is a form of business that self-adjusts to ensure the ethical standards of the business. It represents a business strategy with long-term survival by building good and fair relationships with stakeholders.
The ADISC measurement varies due to characteristics and requirements between different sectors and countries. Global reporting initiatives (GRI) are measures based on social, economic, and environmental concerns. Triple bottom line (TBL) uses three main dimensions such as social, economic, and environmental (Bidari, 2016). However, this paper presents new empirical research about ADISC by Circular 155 for Vietnamese listed commercial banks.
For profitability, Fry (2005) believed that profitability is the result of a process related to the busi-ness activities of an enterprise. It is the difference between the results obtained and the cost to get that result. Weber (2009) considered that profitability is a benefit brought in the process of doing business and by the ability to create profits of the business. Profitability is determined by the change of assets, capital sources, and investment value. Depending on the field of business or industry, the previous studies have measured the factors of profitability that affect ADISC on the basis of ROA ( . The legitimacy theory states that an enterprise should conduct activities to harmonize with the value systems and ethical standards (Dowling & Pfeffer, 1975). This theory considers that an enterprise has a commitment to social responsibility with the community and the environment in which it operates. The legitimacy theory explains the behavior of organizations to ADISC (Bidari, 2016). Therefore, businesses implement ADISC to legalize their actions and to get social approval. An organization also needs to keep in mind ethical and cultural values to comply with social norms to ensure legitimacy (Jahid et al., 2020). Moreover, the stakeholder theory was formulated by Freeman in 1984. This theory concerns the connection between an enterprise and stakeholders, whereby stakeholders influence the performance of a business to meet their expectations (Freeman, 1984).
The theory considers the contractual relationships between all related parties. Stakeholders include employees, creditors, suppliers, customers, and local communities (Mallin et al., 2014). All stakeholders contribute to an enterprise so the enterprise should pay attention to the related interests (Ridwan & Mayapada, 2020).
Several studies have checked the influence of profitability on ADISC. The perceived results differ as positive, negative, or neutral due to geographic scope, time, and subjects of study. Typically Vietnamese listed companies in 2020. Due to limited studies on ADISC in Vietnam, particularly in the banking sector, this study chooses the subject of listed commercial banks in Vietnam. It helps to more specifically identify ADISC of the banking sector in Vietnam in order to have policies that will help improve ADISC in Vietnam in line with the trend of global integration.

METHODOLOGY
Vietnam has 18 commercial banks listed on the stock market. However, some banks do not have annual reports for many years, so the information is not used for the sample. Thus, the data sample includes 86 observations from 2015 to 2019. The paper uses OLS and Eviews 10 to check the model. According to experts from the Central bank of Vietnam, combining characteristics and econom-ic conditions in Vietnam, the paper considers the influence of profitability on ADISC of listed commercial banks. The regression model is presented as follows:

RESEARCH RESULTS
According to the results of    Table 5 shows that the p-value is 0.000 and less than 0.05, so H0 is accepted and H1 is rejected. Therefore, the model has no diagnostic phenomenon.   There are two factors that influence ADISC in Vietnamese listed commercial banks -ROA and ROE. ROE has a higher impact level than ROA. This shows that listed commercial banks with high economic efficiency will tend to increase ADISC. Usually, listed commercial banks are highly profitable, so they want to promote more images and create brand value and reputation for banks.
Through that, listed commercial banks would also like to send messages to stakeholders about their CSR. This contributes to the confidence of stakeholders. Furthermore, through the ADISC, listed commercial banks also demonstrate compliance with the laws that represent a contract of the commitment of responsibility between them and related parties.
On the basis of the survey results, the Vietnamese government should urgently revise CSR regulations to comply with international standards. Moreover, the Central bank of Vietnam needs to raise awareness of bank managers so that they comply with the regulations. The Central bank should regularly monitor the ADISC of listed commercial banks. Further, bank managers need to show their responsibility to the community and society. They need to have a long-term development strategy based on the harmony between economic growth, community, and society. The State Securities Commission of Vietnam needs to regularly inspect the ADISC of listed commercial banks. Some of the additional investigative sanctions required for listed commercial banks do not provide complete ADISC. The State Securities Commission of Vietnam may even consider delisting listed commercial banks that have repeatedly violated ADISC.

CONCLUSION
In the context of global economic integration, CSR is concerned with economic growth. It is not a matter of a country or a region, it is a global problem. The research results show that profitability factors, including ROA and ROE, have a positive influence on ADISC of Vietnamese listed commercial banks, of which ROE has a higher influence than ROA. On that basis, Vietnamese government authorities should standardize CSR regulations in accordance with international criteria, as well as strengthen ADISC monitoring of listed commercial banks. Furthermore, government authorities can impose severe sanctions and even delisting if Vietnamese listed commercial banks disclose incomplete and non-transparent ADISC information. This demonstrates fairness between stakeholders to ensure harmony of economic, social, and community relationships and increase the sustainability of economic growth.