Exploring Corporate Social Responsibility in Foreign Bank Branches from Romania: An Empirical Analysis of Public Disclosure of Financial Statements and Banking Audit Reports

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to investigate the Corporate Social Responsibility CSR/the Social Responsibility Disclosure SRD reporting practices referring to the published banking financial statements and the published auditors' reports. The study was conducted on the foreign bank branches from Romania and is based on their Romanian language web-sites, that constitute the data for the analysis. The results show that voluntary CSR/SRD concepts to disclose the financial statements and the auditors' reports on the Romanian web-sites were applied only by two from nine foreign bank branches. We plead for a social responsibility of the banks, even if they are foreign bank branches that conduct their activities according to the law from their origin countries. Disclosing the economic outputs via web-site could contribute to a high level of banks' transparency and makes part from the responsibility to society into the Corporate Social Responsibility CSR concept.

Keywords

• Banking Disclosure
• E-Transparency
• Social Responsibility of Banks
• Informational Asymmetry