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 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 10 October, 2010 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT When I did my project, I have received many helps and supports from my teachers, my friends, my parents Therefore, I hope to take this opportunity to thank all of them, because without their supports I may not finish my project on time Firstly, I would like to thank my supervisor Dr Phan Duc Hieu, International School, Vietnam National University Hanoi He has helped me a lot He also gave me many useful advices which help me find the right way to start my project as well as to finish it I am very grateful for that Additionally, I would like to thank Mr Tran Le Nguyen, the Vice Chairman of Board of Director of Kinh Do group, who have participated in my interview to collect information I also would like to thank all managers, accountants, consumers and students who have spent their time to help me my research Without their supports I would meet many difficulties in finding information Moreover, I want to express my deep appreciation to my friends and my parents who have encouraged me a lot during my doing the project Especially, I would like to thank my mother who gave me many supports when I did my project Thank everyone for always believing in and supporting for me NGUYEN THI HUONG MAI 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 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 TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION OF ORIGINALITY AND WORD COUNT ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ABSTRACT TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS INTRODUCTION 1.1 CSR: Where did it come from? 1.2.1 Government actions 10 1.2.2 Vietnamese Accounting Standard (VAS) 11 1.2.3 CSR practice and challenges 12 1.3 Reasons for further investigation 13 LITERATURE REVIEW 14 2.1 Definition and conceptualization of CSR 14 2.1.1 Carroll‟s 1979-1991 conceptualization 15 2.2 Stakeholder theory 17 2.3 Social accounting 18 2.4 CSR reporting 19 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 21 3.1 Research objective 21 3.2 Research methodology 22 3.3 Data source 22 3.4 Research method 23 3.5 Research too 24 3.5.1 Questionnaire 24 3.5.2 Annual report 25 3.6 Data collection 25 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 FINDINGS AND ANALYSIS 27 4.1 Some typical corporations 27 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 4.5.1 Real situation of CSR in Vietnam 51 4.5.2 Some theoretical problems and demand for changing 54 CONCLUSION 57 REFERENCES 60 APPENDIX A: QUESTIONNAIRE 67 LIST OF FIGURES Figure 2.1.1 Dipiction of Carroll‟s (1991) CSR pyramid 15 Figure 2.1.2 Comparion of CSR studies using Carroll's pyramid concept 16 Figure 2.2 The pressures influence on company 18 Figure 4.1 Respondents 27 Figure 4.2 Consumer and accountant categories 28 Figure 4.3 Distribution of responses from management survey 30 Figure 4.4 Distribution of responses from management survey (percentage) 31 Figure 4.7 Distribution of responses from consumer survey 38 Figure 4.8 Distribution of responses from consumer survey (percentage) 40 Figure 4.11 Distribution of responses from accountant survey 44 Figure 4.12 Distribution of responses from accountant survey (percentage) 46 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 1.1 INTRODUCTION CSR: where did it come from? In the 1970s and 1980s environmental concerns such as loss of rainforest and the effects of pollution led to a recognition that something had to be done to change the way we were using the planet resources As a result, heads of state came together at Rio, Brazil in 1992 for what was called the Earth Summit At Rio, governments pledged action to stop the unsustainable use of resources and to promote sustainable development For this to happen social, environment and economic considerations should be assessed together and not in isolation CSR is now sometimes considered as the business respond to the challenge of sustainable development So 10 well to set the CSR agenda for themselves, taking the best of what has evolved to date and of what their business communities already have to offer Governments may derive greater developmental benefits from CSR where there is a national strategy framework which explicitly recognizes its potential contribution and seeks to align CSR with development goals Foreign investors bring with them expertise on CSR that could be tapped more effectively to strengthen domestic capabilities; contractual arrangements and public – private partnerships are two ways of doing so For each potential intervention, there is a need to assess the likely costs and benefits and possible undesirable side effects Governments should avoid the tendency to over – engineer policy responses More generally, there is a need to ensure that CSR – related interventions are seen as contributing to an enabling and predictable environment for private sector activity If they are ill – conceived or represent an extra burden for business that is not justified by the business benefits, they are unlikely to succeed Many corporate scandals occurred in recent years have elevated the importance of CSR to higher level There is controversy debate in the world about one accepted CSR reporting framework Many studies have been carried out in Western countries, however, CSR is still new concept in developing Asia countries such as Vietnam The globalization put strong pressure on Vietnam economy to comply with many international standards and cope with the high development speed of the world Embracing CSR and its reporting can be seen as important target for Vietnam economy in the current integration strategy This study investigates real situation of CSR in Vietnam and point out some theoretical problems and the demand for changing the way the government manages The results from the research suggest that there is strongly supporting for CSR from managers and a growing awareness among consumers and accountants Nevertheless, there is a gap 52 between how people perceive and how people act as there is a lack of adequate CSR disclosure from firm, and not-so-enthusiastic supporting actions from consumers due to the barriers in living expenses and low effective CSR communication tools that companies use Generally, when it comes to issue such as CSR, people often seem to express good intention rather than taking actions However, with highly positive attitude toward the important of CSR and the willingness to learn and gain more knowledge about this issue from the survey have drawing potential bright future for CSR in Vietnam It can be suggested that the government should establish mandatory disclosure requirement for firm because it seems that the current CSR system in Vietnam is not effective The mandatory disclosure can enhance the confidence of public on the information provided as there will be a guidelines about what, how, when, and where should the CSR information be disclosed Besides, social audited also should be used to increase the reliability of the information On the other hand, education plays very important role in the awareness of public on the CSR If the public have strong feeling and sensitive for CSR issues, there will be more pressure for firm to act responsible and ethical, and preventing the environmental and social scandals occur in the future For gaining awareness of the citizen about CSR, there should be start with education in school and university for students Especially, for accounting major students, the emphasis of the courses should not only focus on general accounting methods but also on the CSR issues and reporting The government and authorized body as well as corporations should create more programs related to CSR to give more knowledge and attention of the public This study has several limitations Firstly, there is highly potential of bias in the responses because respondents may have exaggerated their commitment and understanding about CSR 53 Secondly, the sample is limited to large firm, which potentially limits its application to small firms Thirdly, the scope of the study is narrow The survey is only taken with managers and accountants from five companies in Hanoi and the consumer population is also only resident from Hanoi Hanoi is a big city of Vietnam, the high education level and living standard of population here affect the way they perceive about CSR issues If the study is taken in rural or remote areas, the results would be significantly different because the education as well as the living standard of population in those areas is still very low It is cannot be ignored that Vietnam is one of the poorest country in the world, how can people in rural and remote areas care about something like protecting environment while they are still have not enough food to eat So, in the future, there is a need to expand the study of attitude about CSR to different areas in Vietnam as well as having a deeper look into the potential industry effects that could influence the perception and action related to CSR Thus, several studies need to be carried out in order to have a broader, more accurate and complete view on this issues in Vietnam 54 REFERENCES Asia Commercial Bank, 2010 Annual report 2008-2009 [e-report] Available at http://www.acb.com.vn/codong/bcthuongnien09.htm 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How you think about quality of the information? 63 _ Additional opinion (option): ACCOUNTANT SURVEY Personal information Company: _ Gender: Male  Years of working experience: Female  Questionnaire To what extent you agree with those statements? 5= strongly agree, 4= agree, 3= neutral/no opinion, 2= disagree, 1= strongly disagree 64 Statements 1 There is a need to apply CSR in Vietnam Accountants are important in CSR field Accountants have highest responsibilities for CSR Should make CSR information clear to stakeholders CSR bring bigs benefits to companies There is a lack of laws and policies on CSR There should have more guidance for accountants Companies should hold training programs for accountants to improve their awareness of CSR Additional personal comments (option): QUESTIONS USED IN INTERVIEWS What you think about CSR? How did you know about CSR? Do you think that your company should implement CSR? In your opinion, what are the benefits of CSR? By what way can your staffs know about CSR? Do you think that CSR has more benefits than the cost companies pay for it? How you make your consumers know your company‟s activities on CSR? Do you think Vietnam companies have applied CSR successfully? In the near future, you have any plan to make an annual report on CSR? 65 66 ... everyone for always believing in and supporting for me NGUYEN THI HUONG MAI CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY – CSR : SOME THEORETICAL PROBLEMS AND DEMAND FOR MANAGING CHANGES RELATED TO CSR IN VIETNAM.. . 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.. . attentions and actions from the government and companies This paper aims to discover how the companies to implement CSR in Vietnam then show some theoretical problems and the demand for managing changes