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DECLARATION OF ORGINALITY
AND WORD COUNT I hereby declare that the graduation project is based on my original work except for
quotations and citations which have been duly acknowledged. I also declare that it
has not been previously or concurrently submitted for any other course/degree at
HELP University College or other institutions.
The word count is 10.217 words.

NGUYEN HONG NHUNG
October 2011
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

This study would not have been made without the assistance, support and

OCTOBER 2011

Supervisor: Dr. Pham Duc Hieu
ABSTRACT

For many years ago, the concept and component of Corporate Social
Responsibility (CSR) was recognized and implemented commodiously by
international business environment, however this concept is quite new to Small and
Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in Vietnam.
Because Vietnam is the developing country and new member of WTO, thus CSR
issue becomes the necessary and sufficient. Therefore, the main purpose of this study
wants to discuss about the assessment of understanding of the concept, components,
and implementation of CSR with (SMEs) in Vietnam. Moreover, this study wants to
find out the impact of CSR within the development process of company. The result
of this study is the clearly evidences by collecting data from the advisory of
company, researching process and questionnaires.

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TABLE OF CONTENT

DECLARATION OF ORGINALITY AND WORD COUNT 1
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT 2
ABSTRACT 3
TABLE OF CONTENT 4
LIST OF FIGURES 7
LIST OF CHARTS 8
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS 9
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 10
1.1 CSR in Vietnam 10
1.2 CSR in SMEs company 11


& VIPACO
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JSC

34
4.1.1 Introduction about Vinaconex Investment and Tourism Development Joint –
stock Company (Vinaconex – ITC) 34
4.1.2 Introduction about VIPACO Joint Stock Company ( VIPACO - JSC) 35
4.2 Description of Respondents’ information 36
4.2.1 Description of respondents’ age 36
4.2.2 Description of respondents’ gender 37
4.2.3 Description of respondent’s education level 37
4.3 Description and Analysis the understanding CSR concept of respondents 38
4.4 Evaluation of CSR implementation 39
4.4.1 Description and Analysis of Questionnaire about Vinaconex – ITC 39
4.4.2 Description and Analysis of Questionnaire about VIPACO 41

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4.4.3 Description and Analysis of Questionnaire for managers of Vinaconex –
ITC and VIPACO 43
4.5 Evaluation of Sustainability development and CSR implementation 44
4.5.1 Description and Analysis of Questionnaire about Vinaconex – ITC and
VIPACO 44
4.5.2 Description and Analysis of Questionnaire for managers of Vinaconex –
ITC and VIPACO 47
4.6 Overall Discussion 50
CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION 52
5.1 Conclusion 52
5.2 Recommendation 53

Table 4.2 General information about VIPACO

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LIST OF CHARTS

Chart 4.1 Age frequency of respondents
Chart 4.2 Gender frequency of respondents
Chart 4.3 Education level frequency of respondents
Chart 4.4 Description of Result – Question 1
Chart 4.5 Description of Result – Question 2 – Questionnaire for V – ITC
Chart 4.6 Description of Result – Question 3 – Questionnaire for consumers of
Vinaconex – ITC
Chart 4.7 Description of Result – Question 2 – Questionnaire for consumers of
VIPACO
Chart 4.8 Description of Result – Question 3 – Questionnaire for consumers of
VIPACO
Chart 4.9 Description of Result – Question 4 – Questionnaire for consumers of
Vinaconex – ITC and VIPACO

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CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
1.1 CSR in Vietnam
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is more concentration in the world.
However, the importance role of CSR has not really high evaluated in Vietnam. Due
to the today’s global CSR, companies should focus on not only good and high quality
products but also human rights, labor conditions and environment. According to the
director of Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry, PhD Doan Duy Khuong,
“CSR has become necessary requirement for each company, if the company does not
embrace CRS, they cannot approach the global market” (http://www.saga.vn)
Nowadays, CSR is still new concept because of lack awareness of public and
business community. This issue is the main factor influences much on the CSR
practices. Due to the economic integration process, the awareness of the CSR issue
has been changed but has not the most effective consequence.
Recently, Vietnamese enterprises become more and more actively in their social
responsibility in various areas include consumer’s satisfaction and employer’s health
care, student’s scholarships and environmental protection activities. They realized
the vital of CSR performance and carry out CSR application in their business, since
they will receives more advantages than competitors. When the companies care
about employees such as their life and working conditional, it leads to raise
employees’ loyalty and more productivity. Moreover, together with good
implementation of protection environment and society, they will make their brand
name more popular and more reliable. One more important is attracting more
investors and more shareholders’ belief. That is reason why many companies
identified the relationship between CSR and sustainability and step-by-step complete

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this interactive relationship. In short, we believe that will have the positive changes
CSR performance in near future.
1.2 CSR in SMEs Company

doing business? And why do managers address CSR?
Nowadays, CSR has recently tends to the marketing area. Customers want to
understand firm’s social, ethical, and environmental project how influences
marketplace outcomes. For example, the tendency of using the “green” product is
more and more general.
Accountants have significant in contribution CSR report. Due to the traditional,
accountants prepared the requirement financial statement. However, many years
recently, the accounting academics have been considered study and theory on social
and environmental accounting practitioners, professional reporting reliable CSR
information.

1.3 Government actions
CSR plays an important influence in developing of economic that is reason why
the government always provides not only new Acts and Regulations but also editting
and supplementing ones to achieve the requirement of public. One of the edition and
supplement is the replacement of Environmental Protection Law 1994 in 2005, and
the polluting cases investigation done by the Environmental Police Department
(C36).

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In 1986, A policy of greater openness named “Doi Moi” was promulgated with
purpose transforming Vietnam from a planned economy into “socialist market
economy”. The Doi Moi and open door policies bring advantage in increase
economic grow in 2006, GDP grew by 8.2% compared with last period. However,
main social issues still existence especial the difference between rich and poor
people, environmental degradation include air, noisy, water pollution and the rapidly
raising the industrial accident. Furthermore, the conflict between the employee and
bosses problem should be taken into account.
The government continued to introducing new rule and regulations to control above
issue and has strengthened the legal of implement mechanism however, the

profit while CSR should be in production process. Besides, Vietnamese SMEs have
not accessed and applied the standard of global CSR that have effective implement in
developing country. And one of important challenge which SMEs have to face is the
finacial problem and the technical to carry out CRS standard. For example, the
socialist system always expects companies dropping property, create more jobs,
overcome obstacles and difficulties of raising disadvantaged regions and groups.
However, the most of companies can not do that.
Following Mr. Khuong’s suggestion, the implement of CSR has the effective result,
it should have the organization’s supervises plays advisory role for companies and
the Government and makes policies assistance for CSR appliance.
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1.5 Research questions
Due to evaluate the impact of CSR in SMEs in Vietnam, there are many
questions are developed and try to explain as:
 What is the fact of CSR in SMEs in Vietnam?
 How long does the issue relating CSR the term into Vietnamese society
especially SMEs?
 How does the small and medium enterprises operating in Vietnam relate to
this area?
(UNIDO, 2002, p.1)
Besides, there are many of CSR instrument and tools for building the information
structure to communicate CSR. “Corporate Social Responsibilities Reports feature
and link to recently published, non-financial Corporate Social Responsibility and
Sustainability reports. The CSR Reports page also lists any press releases associated
with the publication of a given report.”
3
The Triple Bottom Line (TBL) reporting

1
http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/policies/sustainable-business/corporate-social-
responsibility/index_en.htm
2
http://www.csr-weltweit.de/uploads/tx_jpdownloads/FDI_CSR_Vietnam.pdf
3
http://www.csrwire.com/reports

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was defined by Elkington (1997) presented information about economic,
environmental and social within three P’s: People, Planet and Profit.
In summary, almost the definition and conceptualization mention about the company
should embrace responsibility with environment, customers, employers, citizens,
stakeholders, and the other entire society member. Moreover, CSR implementation
wants to concentrate on promoting the public interest such as encouraging
community development and voluntarily eliminating activities that harm the social
sphere irrespective of legality and ethical.

2.2 Theories related to CSR
In order to understand more clearly and exactly about CSR, there are many
concepts and conceptualization related to CSR will be mentioned below.

The sencond aspection which carry out the responsibilities of company is legal
ones which obey the Law, Provisions, Regulars, Articles and the other legal
document related which issued by Goverment and local authotities. This legal
responsibilities
enhance the society’s expectation which the business fullfil with the regulation, laws
to achieves economic mission and legal frameworks set up by societal legal system.
For instance, all the manufacturing industrial that thrown the waste of productions
without disposal directly into the environment such as smoke into the sky,waste

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water and so on which can not be knonw as well-perform of legal responsibilities.
Therefore, company should improve the customer’s right protection, environment
protection, fair in competion in business environment to have better performance and
stand on violent competition market.
The third aspection was mentioned ethical responsibilities. The fact that, because
the ethical responsibilities had great influence much on the company. It is the key
factor help the company to overcome with the limitation of law. Nowadays, the
companies make threats against citizen because of some of company accepts to do
anything to gain more profit. For example: fraudulent, bribes, discrimination in
working places. Therefore, besides the legal responsibilities, company has to take
into account the ethical include the human principals and human rights commitment.
However, the defintion of ethical is difficult because ethics is intangible, then the
company should take care the expect of social about the ethical norms and consider
carefully to avoid breaking ethical standard.
In short, the hightest aspection of social responsibilities is Philanthropic
responsibilities or good corporate citizen. In this areas, the company can improve the
people’s life include citizen and employer, moreover, it makes company’s reputation
more and more popular. Each company has own strategy to perform thier
responsibilities however they have the same puposes that contribute and buid in
humanitaian program. For instance, company contribute thier fund to do charity for -22-
This model is considered the principle which is the motivation of social
responsibilities actions include three levels as instructional, organizational and
individual. Firstly, the motivation for company’s activities need base on the principle
of legitimacy or institutional level. For example, because of the the maintain of
credibility and legitimacy likes responsible societal actitities. Therefore, the
motivation should come from an organizational sense of public responsibility,
particularly for outcomes involved to the firm’s primary and secondary areas. After
that, the motivation should come from the choices of individual managers and their
personal responsibility preferences and inclinations.
According to Wood aspection, the second one is Reponsiveness which contributes an
action dimension that supplement both the normative and motivational component of
social responsibilities. This conceptualises embrace environmental assessment,
stakehoder management and management issues. In fact, the achievement strategies
or conversely changing the environment depends on the knowledge for external
environment. Furthermore, another principle of responsiveness is stakeholder
management and the particular types of stakeholder management composes public
affairs officials, employee newsletters and corporate social reporting will become
useful for investigating stakeholder management.
One other hand, management issues will be required investigation the approach
which firm used to devise and monitor responses to social issues.
The last one is the outcomes of corporate behavior that divided into three types as the
impact of corporate social behavior, the implementation responsibility program and
the policies developed by company to control social issues and stakeholder interests
(Jamali, 2008).


normative theory attempts to interpret the function of, and offer guidance about, the
investor-owned corporation on the basis of some underlying moral or philosophical
principles.
The second branch of stakeholder theory is managerial which suggests or predicts
how managers will organize the relationship with many kind of stakeholders to
ensure that the interests or organization’s objective are the best achievement.
The managerial branch affirms that the power of stakeholders influence management
will be related to the stakeholders’ control over resources needed by the organization.
As Ullman (1985, p. 2) states: “Organizations survive to the extent that they are
effective. Their effectiveness derives from the management of demands, particularly
the demands of interest groups upon which the organization depends.”

2.2.4 Triple bottom line theory
Figure 2.4: -25-
Triple Bottom Line (TBL) reporting which defined by Elkington (1997) which
provides information about the economic, environment, and social performance of an
entity. It widely used approach by organization in order to inform report reader how
sustainable organizations are. This report is often expressed through People, Planet,
and Profit.
Figure 2.5: http://ourdailygreenlife.blogspot.com/2010/11/triple-bottom-line-green.html
TBL reporting has become agreement method for businesses to evaluate and
demonstrate their strategies for sustainable growth. TBL report takes into account the
influence of company in social and environment valuations together with financial
returns.