Integrated report is a new topic that concerned in many countries over the world because of the
benefits that brings to businesses, communities, and the sustainable development of each country.
Integrated report demonstrates how an organization think, plan, and tell their business stories. To
make the integrated report is not easy to any business. In order to preparing for an integrated
report in the future, businesses needs to make a good financial reports, annual reports and
sustainable reports. This study focuses on the annual report, especially the corporate responsibility
disclosure in the annual reports of Vietnam listed companies after Vietnam issued the Circular
No.155/2015 guiding disclosure on the stock market. Data collected from 162 listed companies,
they prepared annual reports in 2015, before promulgating the Circular No.155/2015, and annual
reports in 2016, 2017 after this Circular took effect. The results show that the quality of information
disclosure of these companies generally has not significant improved although the proportion of
companies with excellent quality report has increased.
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preparing integrated report, but it's too hard for us to do in the
current stage and conditions. I think that in the future we will have to aim for all that but to
do it we have to prepare a lot of other things”
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Following to Nguyen (2015), the trade-off between costs and benefits related to
corporate information disclosure has been discussed in various other theories which include
legitimacy theory, stakeholder theory, political economic theory, agency theory, signalling
theory, and proprietary costtheory. The author highlight that while the sociopolitical based
theories (legitimacy theory, stakeholder theory, and political economic theory) explain
differences in firms’ behaviours towards voluntary disclosure by using social and/or political
factors; economic based theories (agency theory, signalling theory, and proprietary cost
theory) explain the variations on voluntary disclosure by focusing on the firms’ wealth
maximisation. Thus, the managers always consider the trade-off between the cost and
benefits of disclosure (Nguyen, 2015). We agree with Nguyen and other authors, the tradeoff
between costs and benefits is always considered when companies disclose information.
Pham (2011) study of 30 listed companies Vietnam has shown that the high level of
awareness of corporate social responsibility is not a factor in ensuring that enterprises fulfill
and fulfill their social responsibility reporting obligations, but the perception of Vietnamese
consumers and their procurement decisions have an impact on the implementation of social
responsibility and disclosure obligations (Duc Hieu Pham, 2011). Pham and Do (2015)
investigate the factors affecting the extent of voluntary disclosure by examining the annual
reports of 205 listed industrial and manufacturing companies listing; evidence from that
study suggests are companies with high foreign ownership have a high level of voluntary
disclosure and the company size is an important factor related to the increased level of
voluntary disclosure in annual reports of Vietnamese listed companies (D. H. Pham & Do,
2015). Another study by Dang (2018) for 289 listed Vietnamese firms found that there are
three factors that influence the level of disclosure of corporate social responsibility
information, sustainable development in the annual report of the enterprises are profitability,
business size and independent auditing (Dang et al., 2018). However, this study does not
have access to factors influencing the disclosure of corporate responsibility on the annual
reports of Vietnamese listed companies.
5. Conclusions and policy implications
5.1. Conclusions
Integrated report is a new trend in many countries, the benefits that integrated report
brings to business is undeniable, especially in today's context as businesses are looking to
sustainable development. Integrated report and sustainable development is still new concepts
for the Vietnamese companies. Investors face many difficulties in finding information,
evaluating and communicating with businesses on issues related to environmental, social
and governance which is a initiative for promoting and implementing sustainable
development of business. There are a number of issues that Vietnamese public companies
need to accomplish in order to obtain an annual report in the true meaning of a complete,
formal document that provides investors with an honest view of the status as well as the
future of the business.
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Vietnamese listed companies implement different regulations and as a result, the
quality of annual reports among public companies is very different. It is easy to see that
companies in the financial and banking sectors such as Bao Viet, Vietcombank, are highly
internationalized and understand the value of the annual report so they make annual reports
relatively professionally. Meanwhile, about 60% of public companies still do not pay much
attention to the annual report due to the annual report is rather poor. There are many issues
that public companies need to accomplish in order to obtain an annual report that is, in fact, a
complete and official document on the state of affairs and the future of them.
The quality of annual reports, a critical platform report for an integrated report, are
still many problems need to be improved, especially the disclosure of social and environmental
responsibility. The quality of corporate responsibility disclosure after the issuance of the
Circular No.155/2015 has changed, however, the change is negligible, before the Circular No.
155/2015, the companies has disclosed responsibility information but focus primarily on local
community support information. After the effective date of circular No.155/2015, they have
disclosed additional information on ocial and environmental responsibility but the quality of
information generally has no significant change.
Companies need to be more aware of their responsibilities in making annual reports
as well as better recognition of the benefits that annual reports bring rather than in
accordance with legal obligations of the law.
5.2. Policy implications
To address the above limitations, the state management agencies should study the
promulgation of legal regulations on annual report, integrated report including regulations on
increasing transparency, developing policies addressing environmental, social and economic
issues, maintaining an understanding of regulations on performance measurement, reporting,
monitoring, testing, and interpretation of information related to impact social, environmental
and economic. In addition, it is necessary to strengthen the auditor's monitoring of the
disclosure of information by enterprises. This is the factor that Dang (2018) study has shown
to affect the level of disclosure of corporate responsibility information.
The state should communicate well the benefits of disclosure of corporate
responsibility for sustainable development. To exemplify typical enterprises, adopt
preferential policies, encourage enterprises to disclose information fully with good quality.
The state needs to penalty for companies disclosing incomplete information and
recommendations to consumers and investors, handling sanctions if necessary in case of non-
compliance with information disclosure. Issuing regulations of responsibility information
disclosure need to combined with the obvious payoff when disclosure meet or not meet
specified requirements.
Continuing to maintain and further develop activities of selection the excellent annual
reports to select and honor the enterprises to make good information transparency. This has
always been a positive activity for businesses to be aware of information transparency, a
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measure of market development through enterprise information transparency, governance
quality, and information access of shareholders.
Pham (2011) showed that the perception of Vietnamese consumers and their
purchasing decisions have an impact on the implementation of corporate social responsibility
and corporate responsibility disclosure obligations (Duc Hieu Pham, 2011). Therefore, the
state management agencies and media agencies need to disseminate widely about
responsibility of enterprises in information disclosure in order to raise consumer awareness,
thereby influencing their purchasing decisions to influence enterprises to make them more
accountable to the environment and society as well as the release of information related to
the environment, society.
Raising awareness of the business about improving the quality of annual reports to towards
to implement integrated report in the future, such as: organizing more conferences relating to
information disclosure; disclosing data about enterprises operating effectively, sustainable
development which is contributed from the transparency and quality of information disclosure.
Limitations of this study is only review a content related to general social
responsibility disclosure of an annual report and does not cover all contents of annual reports.
Evaluations of the quality of disclosures base on the subjective view of readers, who see
annual report, that does not base on clear measurement criteria.
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