The reality of social responsibility accounting in commercial banks listed on the Amman Stock Exchange

Abstract

The modern concept of social responsibility states that in the due course of business, enterprises should pay due attention to social interests of stakeholders as a whole as most of the decisions taken by a company affect all the stakeholders. Through these means, companies are now focusing on informing their stakeholders about their contribution to social responsibility through disclosures made in annual reports. In this direction, this study is being conducted with the aim of examining the social responsibility accounting disclosures (SRA) of the banks listed on the Amman stock market. The study analyzed data from 14 Amman Stock Exchange banks for ten years from 2012 to 2021. Data for the study were gathered from Amman Stock’s official website. The results of the study confirm that the extent of disclosures on SRA has been decreasing over the study period, and such a trend has been seen in all the four sub-dimensions (community, environment, employees, and stakeholders) of SRA. The results of the study confirm that social responsibility accounting disclosures differ significantly across the set of business characteristics like firm size, firm age, and equity ratio. The results also confirm a significant negative relationship between bank size and equity ratio with SRA and a significant positive relationship between age and profitability with SRA. The study results suggest that SRA disclosures should be increased both in terms of volume and pattern.