Corporate social responsibility disclosure practices in Vietnam : differences between English and Vietnamese versions of large listed companies

Abstract

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Reporting is regarded as an essential for companies, bringing the triple-benefit combination. Fully constituted CSR reporting enhances internal decision-making process, supports external relation management and advances the stakeholder-related performance.

This thesis aims at comparing the CSR disclosure practices in English and Vietnamese versions of large listed Vietnamese companies' annual reports and sustainability reports. Specifically, the author analyzes the CSR disclosure practice in Vietnamese versions of annual reports. The result is used to compare with such practices in English versions of annual reports from previous studies with the goal of determining the actual practices of CSR disclosure in Vietnam and examining the information that included in Vietnamese versions but not in the English ones and vice versa.

The deductive, qualitative as well as the content analysis research method are employed to conduct the research on selected annual reports and sustainability reports. The result is compared against the previous studies based on four criteria: materiality, completeness, information balance and accuracy. Findings in the empirical part reveals that the practices are different in Vietnamese and English versions of CSR disclosure by large listed Vietnamese companies. The differences concern the compliance level to GRI Guideline and the information balance. Moreover, the analysis concludes that the transparency level is higher among the Vietnamese versions.