Does sustainable development pay off? Learnings from the CSI index of Vietnamese listed firms

This study aims to evaluate how sustainable development affected the financial performance of Vietnam’s listed firms between 2016 and 2023. Based on data from 2,194 observations across 112 firms that have been ranked in the corporate sustainability index since the index’s inception, and 209 control businesses that have never been ranked, the sample was divided into two primary categories: manufacturing businesses and service providers. Amidst the ongoing global debate and diverse perspectives surrounding sustainable development and environmental, social and governance, the findings reveal that far from being a mere cost burden, sustainability acts as a direct lever for enhancing profitability. The authors found a strong and irrefutable positive correlation between return on equity and recognition as a sustainable business. This demonstrates that a consistent commitment to sustainable operations is not only crucial for navigating adversity and seizing opportunities but is also key to optimizing financial returns. The research also considers other variables including firm size, inflation rate, lending interest rate and GDP growth that may have an impact on financial performance. The study not only contributes the relationship between sustainable development and financial performance but also lays a solid theoretical and empirical foundation for the study of sustainable development of enterprises in the context of Vietnam. At the same time, this work enhances the method of measuring and evaluating sustainable development efficiency, in line with current practices in an emerging country.

• Publication year

  2025

• Venue

  The International Journal of Organizational Analysis

• Publication date

  2025-08-07

• Fields of study

  Not labeled

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1108/ijoa-04-2025-5422
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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