Corporate Social Responsibility Businesses' Commitment to Sustainable Development

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is the commitment of a business to contribute to the sustainable development, to work with employees, their families, the local community and society at large, to improve worker’s quality of life in ways that are good for both business and development. This is one definition of CSR initiated by the World Bank. To help readers have further understanding of CSR, VIB Forum had an interview with Mr. Nguyen Quang Vinh, Deputy Head of the International Relations Department of the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI). 

Could you briefly introduce Vietnam Business Links Initiative Programme (VBLI)?

In 1999 a report was published on the use of chemicals in the Vietnam Footwear Industry. Commissioned by the British Government's Department for International Development (DfID) and supported by an alliance of the major international sportswear companies, the report highlighted the need for a comprehensive action plan to improve the selection, storage, use and disposal of the chemicals used in the industry.

The Prince of Wales Business Leaders Forum (IBLF) was asked to consult with all the interested parties to draw up a workable action plan to improve working conditions in the Footwear Industry in the three consecutive years, which would be actively supported by all of the interested parties. As a result, Vietnam Business Links Initiative Programme was set up in early 2000 to carry out that detailed action plan and to act as a liaison between enterprises and government authorities as well as other relevant and interested organisations.

The Steering Committee of the programme include 23 organisations coming from government, business and business associations, academics, trade union and other NGOs who feel interested with the topic. The programme is directly managed by VCCI while advice on continuing the programme’s progress is provided by IBLF. It was initially sponsored by DfID and three multinational sport shoes companies (Nike, Adidas-Salomon, Pentland).

Initially, the Programme was intended to focus on improving occupational health and safety conditions for the footwear industry for three years. From 2004 onwards, the programme was agreed to expand its framework and greater field is now dealt with, say, sustainable development (SD), including corporate social responsibility (CSR); and our targeted audiences consists of both footwear and apparel enterprises.

The pilot projects have been finished at seven footwear companies with comparatively positive results. The first-ever handbook on OHS has been also released to assist business management to handle such issues to secure their sustainable development. Also, findings in several researches regarding OHS and CSR conducted by the programme have been delivered to responsible authorities for consideration. A not-less important field that the programme has been dealing with is information transmission and exchange, including regular newsletter publications, participation in annual National Week on OHS and Fire Safety, establishment of VBLI's website to report on all activities of the programme so far, articles published in relevant newspapers and other information transmission channels.

What are benefits of implementing CSR at business level?

Here, it seems at first sight that the implementation of CSR at the workplace would bring benefits to employees, but on second thought, you would realise that it is not anyone else but employers who can get the majority of advantages brought in by that implementation.

The term CSR has started to become popular in the mindset of business management though it is not fully and concretely understood. And, they have started to catch up with this new concept. Actually, the way to implement CSR at the workplace is different from one business to another. They can use Code of Conducts (CoCs) composed by either customers or a quality standard institution or even that corporate himself. Here it is essential to clarify between the 2 terms: implementing CoC and obtaining quality certificate accredited by a third party. Based on two criteria, it can be realised that the number of footwear and apparel enterprises following regulations stated in CoCs is too large while the number seeking for certificate is quite limited. Why? It costs much money to get such a certificate whilst most of enterprises are still processing units and face lack of finance as well as human resources.

Can you mention to challenges in implementing CSR in Vietnam?

Still, there are many challenges that Vietnamese entrepreneurs have to face with during the implementation of CSR. First, there are totally more than 1,000 different corporate CoCs being implemented worldwide at the same time. And an enterprise in Vietnam is now likely to carry out three to five different CoCs from different customers. It is waste of time and causes inconvenience in management work. Moreover, as mentioned above, lack of finance and human resources are another serious problem. Workers themselves hardly have any ideas about their rights and responsibilities during working hours so they cannot protect themselves against occupational risks. Internal communication and documentation at the factory level is also not strong and transparent enough. At the macro-management level, the enforcement capability of our laws and regulations on this issue is still too weak, plus the limited labour monitoring and inspection system in the country over. The final is lack of positive cooperation between key sectors: Government, buyers and businesses, to handle the issue, leading to inconsistency in top-down management and corresponding guidance.

To overcome this, more efforts of three parties should be required to improve the cooperation structure and mechanism. Information delivery and transmission should be much more enhanced, for all people get a fully understanding on this term as well as its scope of work. Once they get it, the implementation would be much more facilitated. This can be done through continuous training, technical assistance and transfer, also via mass media outlets.

These are essential measures that should be applied immediately to effectively implement CSR at the workplace. Besides, may other measures on administration, monitoring and inspection could be much helpful.

• Reported by Lan Anh