*4.3. Assessment of Vietnamese SDGs Adopters: Substantive or Symbolic Approaches to Corporate Legitimacy*

Table 9 describes how firms disclose information about their SDGs in their corporate reporting, whether it is substantive (*green-wishing*) or symbolic (*greenwashing*), by reviewing all selected firms' reports with three main criteria (1) The awareness of the CEO/chairman toward SDGs; (2) The corporate awareness of risks and opportunities related to SDGs and (3) The corporate-specific KPIs associated with the SDGs. Table 9 is also used to indicate the trends of firms in committing to SDGs by comparing the answers "Yes" and "No" for two preceding years: 2015 (the year of global implementation of SDGs) and 2021 (the current year). Surprisingly, there is considerable inconsistency in adopting and disclosing SDGs information by the Top 100 Vietnamese firms. For instance, some firms have SDG-related information in the CEO/chairman. Yet, there is no information indicating the risks/opportunities or connection between their firms' KPIs to the SDGs, suggesting that managers' perception of SDGs is insignificant to disclose SDG information. Moreover, some firms (e.g., OCH, HAG, and KDH) show their effort in committing to the SDGs by indicating this fact in the CEO/Chairman letter in 2015. However, no information was mentioned in 2021. Accordingly, our findings suggest Vietnamese firms show a "*green talk*" not a "*green action*" in their ARs or standalone SRs rather than following substantive SDG strategies.


**Table 8.**

Adoption of SDGs by Sectors.


 **:**

#### *Sustainability* **2022** , *14*, 15358


**Table 9.** Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Disclosures Criteria Check List.


#### **Table 9.** *Cont.*

Note: N/A means both annual and sustainability reports are not available on the company websites or elsewhere.

Additionally, several companies attempt to indicate their effort to engage in SDGs without specific KPIs, as shown in the below quotes:

"*BIDV has always tried to ensure equity environment and paid attention to material and spiritual lives of female staff, as well as created conditions for female staff to participate in professional operation, promotion and appointment (mostly at department leader positions)*" [92]

"*Construction and operation of real estate projects consume a large amount of energy. Therefore, to save energy, Khang Dien actively applies many solutions to save power and fuel.*" [93]

"*Baoviet always engages economic growth with environmental protection and social responsibility—three pillars on which a long-term success of Baoviet is built...*" [94]

"*...BVSC always encourages and mobilizes employees to use public transport, helping to reduce CO2 into the environment.*" [95]

Notwithstanding, 8% of total firms (as presented in Table 6) indicate that they wish to be green (*green wishing*) by indicating an effort to adopt all global goals. Furthermore, although during 2015–2021, some firms just partly followed the 17 UN SDGs, these firms have set and achieved specific key performance indicators (KPI).

For example, as seen in Figure 2, FPT sets some objectives to ensure the achievement of sustainable growth [96].

**Figure 2.** FPT Corporation's KPI for SDGs.

Besides, Petrovietnam Transportation Corporation (PVT) indicated their SDG targets, as presented in Figure 3 which was extracted from the AR 2018 [97].


**Figure 3.** Petrovietnam Transportation Corporation's KPI for SDGs.

Additionally, for 2015, 21% of the sampled firms mentioned the SDGs in the CEO/Chairman letter, 15% showed their awareness of risks related to SDGs, and 41% linked their KPIs to SDGs. Compared to 2021, there is an increasing trend; however, there is a neglectable increase for the three criteria, 20%, 26%, and 56%, respectively. Although many firms link their business objectives to SDGs, as pointed out in Tables 5 and 6, these SDGs primarily indicate the firms' effort to legitimize the firms' images of sustainable development rather than achieving the UN SDGs. Additionally, our findings show a lack of corporate understanding of SDG risks and opportunities among the top 100 Vietnamese firms. Therefore, our results suggest that it is necessary for Vietnamese firms to significantly use SDG disclosures as 'a strategic tool' or *green wishing/substantive actions* to strengthen their legitimate image for striving for long-term SDGs. Instead of using it as *greenwashing actions* to "deal" with stakeholders' pressure of non-financial disclosures such as SDGs, which is in line with previous literature [16,17,49].

#### **5. Conclusions**

Throughout the analysis of the top 100 Vietnamese listed firms on the two biggest stock exchanges (HOSE and HNX), we provide a holistic picture of how firms operating in emerging markets like Vietnam adopt and follow the 17 UN SDGs. As pioneering research in the context of Vietnam, we reviewed the corporate reporting of SDGs in both ARs and SRs. Our findings indicate that 84% of total firms are partly engaging in the 17 UN SDGs, by focusing on some specific goals (SDG1—Poverty, SDG8—Economic growth, and SDG13—Climate change). This suggests that there is a lack of "actual implementation" for SDGs among Vietnamese listed firms.

At the industry level, we found that corporate SDG disclosures differ between corporations because of their business strategies rather than the nature of their industrial sectors. Furthermore, the findings indicate that firms operating in high environmental sensitivity industries are keen on reporting SDG-related information compared to medium and low environmental sensitivity industries. Unsurprisingly, many companies operating in high-risk industries (e.g., natural gas distribution and utilities) avoid disclosing SDG-related information to protect their legitimacy. Likewise, our findings reveal a considerable inconsistency in adopting and disclosing the SDG information to the public, suggesting that Vietnamese firms should use SDG disclosure as '*a strategic tool*' to strengthen their legitimacy and truly satisfy stakeholders' social, environmental, and business ethic expectations.

Consequently, from a theoretical standpoint, this research can contribute to the academic literature on adopting and disclosing SDGs in developing countries. It represents one of the first studies to explore SDG adoption in a developing country's context by providing a unique multi-theoretical framework of legitimacy, stakeholders, and voluntary disclosure theories to analyze the motivation for adopting the 17 UN SDGs.

From a practical perspective, our findings can be used as a guideline for corporate decision-makers of Vietnamese publicly traded firms to identify the status of SDGs adoption and implementation and satisfy stakeholders' expectations. The findings also send a warning message to the board of directors/corporate decision-makers to adopt and embed the 17 UN SDGs into their business models and organizational culture. Simultaneously, this research also contributes to exploring the corporate adoption and implementation efforts to report SDGs toward fulfilling the UN Agenda of 2030 for developing countries. At the country level, our findings are essential for government, practitioners, and policymakers to support companies in adopting and achieving these UN SDGs as part of their business strategies and objectives by providing a consistent and binding framework for communicating the action plan and achievement level of these SDGs in ARs and/or standalone SRs.

Like other research, this paper has some limitations, yet it provides vital opportunities for future research. Firstly, the research sample only focuses on Vietnamese listed firms on the two biggest stock exchanges. Therefore, the discovery of the SDGs' adoption and implementation may only partially reflect the holistic view of all Vietnamese companies. Moreover, our findings point out a question mark for the case of adopting the 17 UN SDGs in a developing country, Vietnam (Do these firms "pretend" to satisfy the stakeholders' expectations of social and environmental information or honestly act to progress their commitment toward the SDGs?). Therefore, future research may consider a large sample size (e.g., by using cross-country corporate data) or adopt qualitative research methods using questionnaires and/or semi-structured interviews to assess the impact of managers' religious beliefs, personal characteristics, and attitudes towards corporate sustainable development in different countries adopted and implemented the 17 UN SDGs, see, for example, Helfaya & Easa [98]. Secondly, since this is the case of Vietnam, the results should be applied with caution in different contexts. Consequently, at a micro level, future research can consider adopting our research framework for multi-national companies operating in different industries to investigate the key determinants (e.g., firm's characteristics and corporate governance factors) that affect the process of adopting and implementing these 17 SDGs. At a macro level, future research could examine the institutional factors (e.g., legal systems, ownership structure, size of capital markets, cultural factors, political stability, environmental regulations, etc.) in both developing and developed countries to discover what aspects of emerging countries are different from other developed countries; and to examine the difference among countries in implementing and engaging SDGs. Thirdly, we primarily relied on content analysis to investigate the status quo of adopting and implementing the 17 UN SDGs in Vietnam. Accordingly, future research could employ a mixed methodology (e.g., quantitative and qualitative) to investigate the level of adopting and implementing the 17 UN SDGs and their determinants.

**Author Contributions:** Both authors have contributed equally to this research. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

**Funding:** This research received no external funding.

**Institutional Review Board Statement:** Not applicable.

**Informed Consent Statement:** Not applicable.

**Data Availability Statement:** Not applicable.

**Acknowledgments:** We would like to thank the journal's academic editor, Ioannis Nikolaou, and the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions. The authors also acknowledge financial research support from Becamex Business School, Eastern International University, Vietnam. All remaining errors are our own.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.
