1 INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL
VIETNAM NATIONAL UNNIVERSITY, HANOI

Graduate project: Corporation Social Responsibility – CSR: Some
theoretical problems and demand for managing changes related to
CSR in Vietnam. Supervisor: Phan Duc Hieu
Student: Nguyen Thi Huong Mai
ID: 10155367 2

DECLARATION OF ORIGINALITY
AND WORD COUNT

I want to ensure that my graduation project is based on my own original work except for the
quotations which is common with every one. I also declare that my project have not supported
for any courses or programs at Help University College or other universities. The word count
is 12.328 words.

NGUYEN THI HUONG MAI 4

CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY – CSR : SOME THEORETICAL PROBLEMS
AND DEMAND FOR MANAGING CHANGES RELATED TO CSR IN VIETNAM.
By
NGUYEN THI HUONG MAI
October 2010
Supervisor: Dr. Pham Duc Hieu
ABSTRACT

CSR is not a new title in the world as well as in Vietnam, but CSR is still one of the burning
issues in the day. After Vietnam became a member of World Trade Organization (WTO) in
2007, CSR has become even much more important for the country to develop sustainably. This
paper aims to discover the awareness of Vietnam enterprises about CSR and the reality of
implementing CSR into business in Vietnam. Then, this paper also points out some challenges
and theoretical problems of CSR then shows the demands for managing changes related to
CSR in Vietnam.
Vietnam is a developing country and it is also one of the fastest – growing economies in the
world, therefore how to make the country develop sustainably is still questionable. Vietnamese
government has put may efforts in all field to make the country develop sustainably, including
society, economic, culture and critic. From the experiences of developed countries,
Vietnamese nowadays pay more attention to improve both economic and standard of living.
CSR is one of their efforts to make the country develop sustainably. However, the research
5

indicates that although there is a strong support for CSR from managers, consumers,
accountants, a part of them are still lack of knowledge about the importance of CSR.

3.7. Sampling 26
3.7.1. Sample population 26
3.7.2. Sample frame 26
3.7.3. Sample size 26
3.7.4. Sample techniques 27
3.8. Limitations 27
4. FINDINGS AND ANALYSIS 27
4.1. Some typical corporations 27
7

4.1.1. Domesco Medical Corporation – first prize in the implementation of liability for
workers 27
4.1.2. JSC Pesticides Can Tho (CPC) – Second prize in the field of environmental
protection 28
4.1.3. Vietnam Daewoo Motor Company South-Vidamco – Third prize in the field of
environmental protection 29
4.1.4. Zamil steel building Vietnam Company – Consolation prize of CSR 29
4.1.5. Son Ha Garment Joint Stock Company – received a prize of CSR 29
4.2. Management 32
4.2.1. Finding from questionnaire survey 32
4.2.2. Actual CSR disclosures by firm 37
4.2.3. Finding from managers interview 38
4.3. Consumers 41
4.3.1. Finding from questionnaire survey 41

4.3.2. Overall evaluation of consumer‟s responses 43
4.4 Accountants 47
4.4.1. Findings from questionnaire survey 47
4.4.2. Overall evaluation of accountant‟s responses 49
4.5. Overall discussion 51 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

CSR Corporate Social Responsibility
CSP Corporate Social Performance
IAS International Accounting Standard
IQR Inter-Quartile Range
MOF Ministry of Finance
NGO Non-governmental Organization
PR Public Relation
TBL Triple Bottom Line
VAS Vietnamese Accounting Standard
VCCI Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry
SMEs Small and Medium – sized Enterprises
VASB Vietnam Accounting Standard Board
RIA Rich Internet Applications
IQR Inventory Quality Ratio
10

companies. That is quite good news, but it is only one aspect of the issue. Many commentators,
despairing at the fact that companies have failed to clean up their act despite so many claims of
social responsibility. Even when many companies are aware of the importance of CSR they
still only regard CSR as their task rather than their opportunity.
12

1.2. CSR in Vietnam
CSR was first introduced in Vietnam by international corporations sourcing under the form of
Code of Conduct or Social Standard requirement. As CSR is getting more attention throughout
the world, Vietnam has a great deal left to learn considering that many SMEs in Vietnam do
not really see the importance of CSR. CSR plays a special crucial role in the country‟s
economy when nowadays many of the world largest MNCs are increasingly focus on Vietnam
as the next emerging economy in the Asia Pacific region. The truth is that Vietnam is suffering
from a shortage of skilled labor and an inconsistent legal system and there is a need for
competitiveness and investment in infrastructure. Therefore, to be able to compete in today‟s
global arena, companies must be able to ensure human rights, good labor conditions and safety
requirements, not just provide fast and high quality products. The pollution in Thi Vai river,
contaminated milk and conflict between workers and their bosses are the events proved that
implementing CSR is necessary for Vietnam to develop sustainably.
1.2.1. Government actions
Vietnam government has put many efforts in calling on companies to protect the environment
and promote safety and health in workplace ( Civil Law Network, 2009 ). That plays an
important role in making the country develop sustainably, especially after the Doi Moi reforms
and open-door policies in 1986. Being a developing country, Vietnam can not refuse many
major social problems. The government is aware of that therefore many new regulations,
Environment law, Environment policies, tariff barriers had been created to encourage
companies to produce “clean products”, protect the environment and establish good workplace,

program “Den Dom Dom scholarship”. Some SMEs started to pay more attention to CSR. For
instance, HUB café is making a communist library with over 10,000 books in various kinds to
serve customers. “establishing the communist library met many difficulties due to rare
documents or even popular documents but becoming out of date. When all efforts had been
made and the library was already established, the attention of customers is not as expectation
because customers are in habit of chatting while drinking coffee rather than reading books”
says Mr. Truong Giang, the director of HUB cafe company. In general, many companies did
something for CSR, but how many percent of them did because of their volunteer or all they
did because of their image? According to Ms. Nguyen Hong Ha, the general manager of VCCI
in HCMC “the leaders of the companies should do CSR because of their worker first in the
environment of workplace, social insurance, etc, to build a good relationship based on the
belief between the employers and the employees”. Some challenges of implementing CSR in
Vietnam are that there are still gaps between national labor code and CoCs, there is a lack of
law enforcement, lack of cooperation, lack of understanding of the benefits from the
application of CSR at factories, lead to the lack of support from employers. To overview,
although Vietnamese enterprises had made many efforts on implementing CSR, they still meet
many challenges, not only at national level, industry level but also at corporate level
1.3. Reasons for further investigation
.CSR is the hot issue nowadays in every part in the world. Vietnam is integrating into the
global economy, so the country must improve its competitiveness not only through good
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products but also through good environment. That why CSR should be received much more
attentions and actions from the government and companies. This paper aims to discover how
the companies do to implement CSR in Vietnam then show some theoretical problems and the
demand for managing changes related to CSR in Vietnam. As such it does not claim to have all
the answers and invites open exchange.

figure. According to Carroll, the management‟s identification of the issues that are most
importance to firms in a given time is necessary for high corporate social performance. 17 Figure 2.1.1 Dipiction of Carroll‟s (1991) CSR pyramid
Another study tested Carroll‟s CSR pyramid for a sample of 503 large Black-owned business
in the U.S., suggesting the importance of culture (Edmodson and Carroll, 1999). The survey
found that while the economic component was rated as philanthropic and legal responsibilities
was relatively small. A further study with a culture dimension compared the views of 165
Hong Kong and 157 U.S. students on CSR and found that Hong Kong students emphasized
economic aspects more strongly than their U.S. counterparts and gave no difference in
weighting between legal and ethical dimensions of CSR (Burton, parh, & Hegarty, 2000).

Studies
Mean values

Economic
orientations
Legal
orientations
Ethical
orientations
Philanthropic
orientations
18

Aupperle, Carroll &

1.41
 Sweden
3.27
3.30
2.43
1.00
 Switzerland
3.11
3.04
2.70
1.10
 USA
3.11
2.96
2.48
1.19
Edmondson & Carroll
(1999)
3.16
2.12
2.19
2.04
Burton, Farh &
Hegarty (2000)
-
-
-
-
 Hong Kong
3.11

stakeholder theory attempts to explain when corporate management will be likely to attend the
expectations of particular (powerful) stakeholders. In this branch of stakeholder theory,
organization will not respond to all stakeholders equally, but to the most powerful. Managers
should understand the two branches of the stakeholder theory to be one or the other of the
absolute extremes of the ethical or managerial branch. Companies are under pressure of
internal and external stakeholders as shown as below.

Table 1: the presures influence on company
Figure 2.2: The pressure influence on a company
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Then, to make CSR more popular to the stakeholders, both managers and accounts need to
have a full knowledge about stakeholder theory as well as the importance of CSR.
2.3. Social accounting
Social accounting is not a new concept – it has been around for decades (Sustainability 1999).
Then we can understand social accounting as “Social accounting is about understanding the
impact of organizations on our society…the overarching context is…sustainability: both
sustainability of the organization itself (the interrelation of the social, the environmental, the
cultural and the financial) and sustainability of behavior which contributes to a future for the
people and the planet” (Pearce 2001). Everybody can realize that any actions an organization
undertakes influence not just itself but also may influence other with which it interrelates. It
may include the business environment in which the firm is operating, local community, and the
wider global context. These influences can be significant, multiple, and ambiguous. In some
countries social reporting as a legal requirement. For instance, in France companies with over
300 employees are required to produce a social report. In the UK a regulation on Pension
Funds “requires trustees to state the extent to which they have taken the environmental and
ethical considerations into account in fund management” (New Economics Foundation 2000).
The themes of social and environmental accounting have increased the complexity of the
traditional view by including both internal and external stakeholder, along with a
multidimensional view of performance (including the non-financial values).

there are many conveniences for Vietnam corporations to learn from them.
Although there is still some problems in implementing CSR in Vietnam, with the aim of
learning from other countries, Vietnam corporations will be able to develop sustainably in the
near future. 3. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

3.1. Research objective
The paper aims to find the origin of CSR. Besides it aims to find the reason why CSR came
into Vietnam. The research also takes a look on the performance of companies on CSR issue.
Then, prepare the awareness of management and the reality they apply CSR into their business.
Moreover, the research purposed to discover the level of customers‟ awareness about CSR,
whether they care about CSR, and whether CSR has impact on their purchasing decision. And,
the research also find out the importance of implementing CSR into business as well as its
benefits to consumers, companies, shareholders, etc.
23 3.2. Research methodology
I did this research with the support from the interview between me and many managers,
accountants and consumers

3.3. Data source
To meet the information needs, there is necessary to gather both secondary data and primary
data.


in finishing the research.
3.5. Research tool

3.5.1. Questionnaire
In this research, I use information from survey (Appendix A). the survey was done with three
patterns, they are managers, consumers and accountants. The interview with the manager has
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been made with 6 questions (in appendix A). those questions mainly aims to find out the
attitude of the managers toward implementing CSR into their business and the reality situation
of implementing CSR in their business. The survey for the consumers has 7 questions in the
table in chapter 4. They are divided into two parts: the attitude toward CSR and the statement
that consumers support for CSR. The survey for the accountants has 8 questions in the table in
chapter 4. These questions are also divided into three parts: the attitude toward CSR issue,
perception of CSR reporting and the view of the importance of CSR. All of three survey
patterns use five-points Likert scales (1= “strongly disagree”; 5= “strongly agree).
3.5.2. Personal interview
Managers from some companies have taken part in the interview. There are 7 main questions
and many addition questions prepared to ask the. The interview aims to find out the current
CSR practice of companies.
3.5.3. Annual reports
I do research based on annual report of 10 companies. Those annual reports show the activities
that corporations have made through many years.

3.6. Data collection
The project mainly based on my primary data. The question survey has been made with people
at Cau Giay District in Hanoi, students of International School, Vietnam National University
Hanoi (IS – VNU), the consumer in some grocery stories and many accountants of many
different companies. The secondary data also find in annual reports of some big corporations.