The Relationship between Corporate Social Responsibility and Financial Performance: Empirical Evidence from Vietnam

For many years, many academics and practitioners have paid attention to the increasing popularity of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and its relationship with financial performance. They have shown that creating social and sustainable responsibility can strengthen the organization’s financial performance as the organization can achieve its current needs without compromising the ability to meet future needs. While much theoretical and empirical evidence has been provided to support this argument in developed countries, this topic is under-researched, and the outcomes are controversial in developing countries. Therefore, this paper aims to examine and investigate the relationship between corporate social responsibility and financial performance in Vietnamese organizations. The dataset includes 27 firms listed on the stock market exchanges in Ho Chi Minh city (HOSE) and Hanoi (HNX) from 2015 to 2019. The disclosure approach is adopted to measure corporate social activities; four areas were developed: environment, community, employee and product, customer, and supplier practices. Return on average equity (ROE) and return on average assets (ROA) are two proxies for measuring financial performance. The research results confirm the existing literature with a strong correlation between employees and returns on average assets.